Any composer who can chalk up Renée Fleming and Joshua Bell among his friends and performers is, to put it mildly, doing well. And Behzad Ranjbaran, a member of the L&M faculty since 1994 and a composer of growing repute, is certainly doing well. The last few months have seen premieres of works he has written for both artists. Last September, Fleming sang his Songs of Eternity to critical acclaim with the Seattle Symphony, and in early January, Joshua Bell performed Ranjbaran's Violin Concerto in Britain with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. With an extensive list of orchestral and chamber works to his credit, Ranjbaran's recent performances are among his most high-profile to date.

Left to right: Gerard Schwarz, Renée Fleming, and Behzad Ranjbaran after the premiere of Songs of Eternity in Seattle in September 2002. Photo by Ben VanHouten, courtesy Seattle Symphony

Born and formatively educated in Iran (he entered the Tehran Music Conservatory at the age of 9), Ranjbaran met Fleming and Bell while furthering his musical studies in the United States. "They're my old friends from school," Ranjbaran explains. "I knew Josh from our time at the University of Indiana, where we met... Over time, a desire to collaborate grew, though it took many years to come to fruition." He met Renée Fleming when they were both graduate students at Juilliard in the mid-80s. Thus both pieces have been some time in the making. "These pieces have been works-in-progress while I was writing others; I managed to write six orchestral works while I was writing these two...[so] it's been a few years now." For Ranjbaran, then, the premieres and their warm reception by audiences and critics alike have been a satisfying culmination of a long period of work.

The Songs of Eternity—a lush, 16-minute song cycle for voice and orchestra, with heady echoes of late Romanticism—is set to texts drawn from the Rubaiyat of the 12th-century Iranian mathematician, scientist, and poet, Omar Khayyam (in English translations by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs). The poems (all of them two-lined stanzas) were painstakingly selected from hundreds of couplets, to form a cohesive set. "It was tough poetry to choose and put together," Ranjbaran explains. "These are all independent couplets and have independent meanings, [so] it took me many months to find nine that would create a collection with a beginning, a middle, and end." On the thematic content of the poetry, he comments: "On the surface, the poetry is very depressing—we don't know about the future, the afterlife; life is too short... the message is essentially 'seize the moment,' and it took me a long time to find a musical atmosphere which would reflect the essence of the poetry, which is upbeat, transcendental, and in a way, open-ended—individual lives stop, but life as a collective form goes on—the reason for the title."

Another source of inspiration in composing the piece was, of course, Renée Fleming herself, whose exquisite upper range seems perfectly suited to the work's yearning melodies. "I try to capture the beauty of her voice, and, in the transparent sections, which are very soft, the intimate quality that she is capable of [even] in a very large hall and which is very special."

What surprises about the Songs of Eternity is their generosity, a seductive, almost Wagnerian richness of sound, as well as a sense of unabashed ecstasy rare in contemporary music—which, according to Ranjbaran, stems directly from his reaction to the texts. "The message of the poetry is, I think, after all these years, still timeless, still relevant: life, once gone, cannot be sought again."

Joshua Bell Photo by Timothy White

The Violin Concerto was written with an individual grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. A three-movement, 30-minute work, it is more varied than the Songs of Eternity, moving from gentle lyricism to full-blooded virtuosity. Even before the work was performed, it bagged Ranjbaran the $5,000 Rudolf Nissim Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Describing the origins of the work, the composer harks back to his early years as a music student in Tehran. "For years, I was mesmerised by the sounds of kamancheh, an ancient Persian bowed instrument considered by some to be one of the ancestors of the modern violin. It has a very particular, intimate chamber quality, close to [that of] the human voice... the idea of combining the power and brilliance of the modern instrument with the intimacy of an ancient solo instrument was irresistible." Despite the exotic connotations of its sound world, Ranjbaran points out "it is still a piece for modern symphony orchestra, [demanding] all the virtuosic techniques of the modern violin." (Asked if, as a violinist himself, he would attempt the piece, his answer comes with a laugh: "I could play it—if I practiced a lot.")

The conductor for the premieres of both pieces was the principal conductor of both the Seattle Symphony and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras: Gerard Schwarz, whom Ranjbaran speaks of warmly. "I'm very glad he was involved in both projects. He understands the importance of presenting a new work in the best possible way to increase the chance of more hearings... for the Songs of Eternity, we had an entire rehearsal devoted to the work—a lot of time for a new work. He is the best friend of a composer."

Ranjbaran speaks with a gentle but persuasive passion—about life, music, art, and particularly his native Iran. "I have a keen interest in many kinds of music, [but] certainly the Persian music which I was close to in my early years comes back in the context of a modern musical language. Every piece is a reminiscence, a journey home for me. The Persian poetry, the Persian gardens, the mountains that I grew up in ...[these have] a very strong presence in my creation." And there is a scenic expansiveness to Ranjbaran's music, with its undulating lines, decorated melodies, and exotic swells of sound, though explicit references to Iranian music are few and far between. "Above all, [the Persian influence is manifest in] the mood of the music. The style may change from one piece to another, but those things are always with me as a natural part of my musical personality."

After two such high-profile performances in a matter of months, Ranjbaran shows little sign of slowing down. He has plans to record an orchestral cycle he calls the "Persian trilogy," written over a period of years, comprising the works Seemorgh, The Blood of Seyavash, and the most recent Seven Passages in the summer months of this year. Talking of the project, Ranjbaran is characteristically enthusiastic: "We're looking at orchestras in London and elsewhere in Europe to record the pieces...This is another project which is very close to me—[these pieces] belong together so I am really happy that they are going to be heard together at last."

Tim Whitelaw is a graduate diploma student in composition.