Syrian pianist: Gara Garayev’s music sparkles with diverse facets
Baku, February 11, AZERTAC
This year marks the 108th anniversary of the birth of Gara Garayev - an outstanding figure in Azerbaijani culture, a great composer, academician, renowned scholar-pedagogue, public figure, People’s Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, and laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR and Azerbaijan.
To commemorate this occasion, AZERTAC is conducting a series of interviews with musicians and cultural figures living and working around the world.
Diala Hanana, a pianist, teacher and soloist from Syria who currently lives and works in Berlin, shared her thoughts on the significance of Gara Garayev’s creative legacy:
“While studying at the Damascus Conservatory with the Azerbaijani teacher Almaz Mehdiyeva, I first became acquainted with the music of Gara Garayev. I admired its depth and restraint, intensity and lyricism. A vivid and powerful inner tension and national color - expressed differently in each work - immediately captured my attention through the unusual combination of national intonations with European form, as well as its oriental melodic coloring, which is close to Arab musical traditions.
The emotional depth of Garayev’s music resonates deeply with me. His works sparkle with diverse facets. Experiencing Garayev’s creativity helped me better understand how European and Eastern musical traditions can interact and enrich one another.”
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