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Tehran Symphony stages Mendelssohn, Iranian music in ‘Whispers Within’
The concerts opened with Mendelssohn’s ‘Op.21 overture,’ a staple of the global symphonic repertoire, written when the German composer was 17 and inspired by Shakespeare’s play, IRNA reported.
The brisk, gossamer string passages and sharply etched woodwind colors were shaped into a tightly paced reading that leaned into the work’s “concert overture” independence rather than programmatic narrative, drawing sustained applause.
Mendelssohn, often cast as a bridge between classical form and romantic imagination, wrote the overture decades before completing the incidental music. Its structural autonomy and lucid orchestration have kept it in heavy rotation at major halls, from Leipzig to London.
The second half turned decisively inward. The orchestra performed Tafazzoli’s ‘Symphony No.1,’ a four-movement work first recorded in 2016 with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. In Tehran, the ensemble presented all four movements across the two evenings, foregrounding a score that absorbs Iranian melodic logic into Western symphonic form without quotation.
The opening sonata movement sets two ideas in parallel motion, followed by a taut scherzo. A passacaglia draws on a theme linked to the coda of Gustav Mahler’s ‘Seventh Symphony,’ before a finale that fuses introduction and rondo with Kurdish-inflected rhythmic drive. The writing is dense and technically demanding, with exposed brass and string figurations that test ensemble precision.
Addressing the audience, Heydarian framed the program as part of a broader push to put Iranian composers “first at home”, arguing that sustained domestic performance is a prerequisite for international circulation.
Premieres, he noted, rarely arrive fully formed, but repeated exposure builds both technique and audience familiarity.