Premiered by the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble at the 12th St. Petersburg International New Music Festival, held at the House of Radio on May 28th.
Chahār Āstāne, a title that may be rendered as “four thresholds,” originates from a brief kemencheh variation of the persian gushe Zang-e Shotor within the dastgāh Chahargāh, yet expands through a personal relecture. The work functions as a structural metaphor in which four phases or thresholds articulate a process of continuous transformation.
These phases are treated as zones of passage and friction, where inherited motivic, rhythmic, and timbral materials undergo displacement, expansion, and reconfiguration. The ensemble behaves as a single morphing organism, its individual voices tracing divergent trajectories that occasionally converge into shared resonant fields.
As the piece unfolds, the source material becomes increasingly latent-stretched, fragmented, sublimated into gestures and evolving into harmonic spaces, reflecting on the notion of the threshold as a state of suspension between origin and emergence.
