Piano at the Center of cultural exchange: Hezvarash
Hezvarash piece is composed based on Avicenna's tuning in ancient oud fretting and the traditional tuning of Irat instrumental music. Of course, not all ancient tunings are needed and only 6 notes from the set of 88 piano keys will change tuning. Hazvarash has obtained its rhythmal pattern from several rhythms (ancient rhythms of Iranian music) which are referred to in various ways throughout the piece. Among them, Ramal-Khafif, Ramal (Ramal) periods that existed in the works of Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi. It has been used in pre-Islamic literature of Iran in Achaemenid and Sassanid inscriptions in official (administrative) texts in the form of Aramaic language. This means, that what is written gives another meaning. The historical idea of the ancient culture of Iran is a reason for mystery in the cultural life of the East according to the grammar of the music of the West. Then the goal is to reach a different musical language while studying the discipline of music and literature.
Maryam Mehraban
Piano
Maryam Mehraban started learning piano at the age of four and gained her first concert experience at the age of 12. She studied piano at the school of music in Tehran. As a minor, she learned the Persian instrument Setar and was trained in both classical European music and classical Persian music. From 2007 she studied piano at the University of Applied Sciences, Culture and Arts in Tehran with Dilbar Hakimova and Raphael Minaskanian. At the age of 18 she performed as a concert pianist and worked nearby as a piano teacher. She completed studies in contemporary music in cooperation with contemporary composers.
Mehraban studied from 2015 Instrumental-pedagogy at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover and had piano lessons with Igor Tchetuev, Teppo Koivisto and Christopher Oakden. As an artist, she initially interpreted works by Persian composers, including world premieres and CD recordings. Since migrating to Germany, she has increasingly devoted herself to performing contemporary music from Europe and America. In 2017, together with Raquel Marcos de la Rua, she premiered the piece “Intervals” by Gottfried Michael Koenig and later in 2020 the piece “Piano Duo” with Yanjun Chen at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. Maryam Mehraban lives in Hanover and is currently working on her doctoral thesis.