Gara and Faraj Garayev

I can’t believe that it took me until now to discover the music of Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev (sometimes spelled Kara Karayev). He was one of Dmitri Shostakovich’s students, but his style is much more in a late Romantic style than his teacher’s neoclassicism.

Here is his Albanian Rhapsody – you’ve surely heard Hungarian and Romanian Rhapsodies, and probably other national pieces, but Albania is as underrepresented in this musical genre, as Garayev is less well-known than he deserves:

Here are his Symphonies No.1 and No.3:

While exploring the music of Gara Garayev on YouTube with a view to sharing it with you, I also discovered that his son, Faraj Garayev, is also a composer, who has written, among other things, a very interesting violin concerto.