David Dalle
Thursday September 25th, 2025 with David Dalle
More new Canadian piano music with Christos Hatzis. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. Celebrating Rumi in Ottawa!

Today's show features piano music by Greek-Canadian composer Christos Hatzis and mystical Persian music featuring the poetry of Rumi and sung by Shahram Nazeri. Piano music by the obscure English composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, which is also included on this new album of Hatzis, provides a bridge between these two musical traditions. American pianist William Hobbs met Hatzis at a music festival in Greece in 2018, where he returned in 2019 to perform Hatzis' "Through a Glass Darkly". Hatzis' only has a few compositions for piano, and Hobbs has recorded them all for this new release. Hatzis shares a focus on exploring the spiritual and mystical through music with both Sorabji and Shahram Nazeri. Two of the works are based on a famous line from Corinthians: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." "Through a Glass Darkly" from 2005 is a searching piece which does not find resolution. Greater conclusion is found in its companion piece "Face To Face" from 2019 which strives for transcendence. We will only hear the first piece today, as its ambiguous ending leads well into the Sorabji and Nazeri. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was born in England in 1892 to a Parsi father from India and an English mother. His father left his family to return to India permanently, but he did set up a trust fund which provided for Sorabji and his mother throughout their lives. This was important for Sorabji, because he remained on the outside of the music world and society for most of his reclusive life. After a disastrous performance of one of his major works in 1936, he withdrew almost completely from society. He continued to compose prolifically, but would not share his music (one of his compositions was entitled "For Me to Play Alone"), until he was befriended by the English composer Alistair Hinton in the early 70's. Hinton became a very close friend and he convinced Sorabji to have his music performed again, starting in 1976. Sorabji bequeathed all his manuscripts to Hinton who created the Sorabji Archive which still exists today (https://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/). Sorabji was a self-taught composer and musician who did not follow any formal musical system, following his own intuition instead. He was influenced by modernist trends in music and composers such as Busoni and Debussy, but the scale of his music was often gargantuan! He wrote several symphonies for solo piano, as well as other works which last several hours. They are not like other famous marathon works like Erik Satie's "Vexation" or minimalist works which potentially result in very long performances based on small repeated patterns. Sorabji's music was all "through-composed", with scores hundreds of pages long and incredibly dense and virtuostic writing, with perhaps millions of notes. I attended a performance of one of his symphonies for solo piano in Toronto and it was over three hours with an intermission. I also featured his infamous "Opus Clavicembalisticum" on my program almost 30 years ago with its four and half hours spread over two shows! However, the piece we will hear today, at 22 minutes long, could almost be called a miniature! His "Nocturne 'Djami'" shows the influence of Persian culture and literature. It is named after the 15th century Persian Sufi poet Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī. It reminds me of music on the setar or tanbur, like the Persian mystic Ostad Elahi.