PRESS
Review of The Legend Bijan and Manijeh
'Of course, it should not be overlooked that Farhad Poupel, the composer of this work, with his refined taste and deep understanding of international classical music, has been able to create a technical yet emotional balance in the piano's accompaniment with the orchestra. He, who is himself a non-professional pianist, knew well how to utilize the piano's potential to create an unforgettable auditory experience.
The technical movements of the piano in this work were both challenging and captivating from a performance perspective, as well as profound and enchanting in their own right.
I believe Poupel has learned this lesson well from ancient Iranian culture: to create a work that, while being impactful and engaging, is free from showiness and shallow, populist virtuosity. As Maestro Hossein Dehlavi said, "If a piece is difficult, it should be due to its musical necessities, not an attempt to make it difficult!'
May 7 , 2024
Christoph Keller's Review of Fantasia On One Note
"A German premiere is the "Fantasie on One Note" by the Iranian composer Farhad Poupel, who lives in England and wrote it in 2019. In this impressive work, the entire musical action refers to a single note (here the "b"). With impressionistic sonority, closeness and distance to this tone emerge, as do expansiveness and density in the piano movement. Tonal and overlapping polytonal sound formations result in an excitingly audible sound fantasy, full of shimmering colours and surprising sequences of movement."
February 11, 2022
A Few Steps On The “Road To Bach”
"Perhaps the Coda of this work can be considered the most brilliant part of this music in terms of harmony, because the composer, in a creative combination, tries to dissolve the dissonant chords outside the normal tonal harmonies in the consonant, triadic chords."
October 1 2021