Amalgam

Ever since Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin recorded the violin and sitar duos of West Meets East in the 1960s, there have been attempts to combine the classical traditions of Western and Indian music in different ways. This new album brings together leading sarod player Amjad Ali Khan (and his sons Amaan and Ayaan) with Bulgarian violinist Elmira Darvarova, who started playing at the age of three and was leader of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York.

Most of the titles are composed by Amjad and grow out of the Indian tradition. The opening piece, ‘Singing Angels’, is an exploration of a raga from South India alternating between sarod and violin. The raga is similar to a Western European mode, but it clearly demonstrates Darvarova's ability in Indian-style improvisation. The two instruments have their very different flavours and don’t really combine; the same is true of the following ‘Sacred Evening’, until they join in the last section. Things get much more interesting when sarod and violin are working together more intrinsically, in the short, dance-like ‘Love Avalanche’ and extensive and virtuoso final composition ‘By the Moon’.

It's impossible to know when it's Amjad or his sons playing, although one gets a sense of different sarod voices in ‘The Himachal Valley’. There's also ‘Distant Dreams’, a violin piece drawing on Darvarova's native Bulgarian traditions, but the standout track is ‘Serene Dawn’, for sarod and tabla (played by Anubrata Chatterjee), which is in the gloriously exotic ‘Raga Lalit’; it takes you to another world.