Venus in the Mirror, double concerto for kamancheh, cello, and orchestra

Composition and premiere: Kayhan Kalhor conceived the idea for Venus in the Mirror in 2022 during a period of social unrest in Iran, the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in support of women’s rights. He discussed the idea with Yo-Yo Ma and wrote the concerto for Ma and himself on a joint commission from the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, and the University Musical Society (UMS) Ann Arbor. Alan Gilbert led the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in the world premiere with Kalhor and Ma as soloists on June 27, 2025, at the Elbphilharmonie, repeating it two days later at the OsnabrückHalle to open the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück. Prior to its Elbphilharmonie performance, the soloists workshopped the piece at the University of Michigan in June 2024 and performed a “preview” with the Orchestra of the Americas led by Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Like most great musicians, Kayhan Kalhor considers his own instrument, the kamancheh or Persian spike fiddle, an extension of his own body. His remarkable ability to evoke the human voice in his playing shores up the idea, sometimes suggesting the illusion that the performer himself is singing through the instrument even as you watch him. Raised from a young age in Tehran, he was recognized for his talent on the kamancheh from early childhood. At age 13 he joined the Iranian National Radio and Television Orchestra, and at 17 joined the Shayda Ensemble. He received further formal training in Western music in Rome and at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He obtained Canadian citizenship and in 1991 moved to New York City. There he later formed the cross-cultural ensemble Ghazal with Indian masters Swapan Chaudhuri and Shujaat Husain Khan to explore the intersection of Persian and Indian traditions through improvisation. In addition to being a composer himself, he is a longtime advocate for Iranian classical music.

When Yo-Yo Ma started his Silk Road Project in 1998 and used his extensive network to explore potential collaborators, Kayhan Kalhor’s name was on the list. The Silkroad Ensemble was born here at Tanglewood during a workshop week in summer 2000 for which Kalhor wrote his Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur, which he performed with Yo-Yo Ma. Kalhor became a founding member of the ensemble, even while his profile as a performer and composer has grown. The Kronos Quartet commissioned his Gallop of a Thousand Horses for kamancheh and string quartet in 1999 and recorded it for their Caravan album, working with Osvaldo Golijov to bridge the gap between his improvised and the quartet’s notated traditions. In 2003 he made his first album for the famed ECM label with Ghazal. He further collaborated with Golijov on the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s film Youth Without Youth. His music has appeared on all of Silkroad’s commercial releases. Kalhor has also performed as soloist with some of the world’s great orchestras, and he performed a solo recital at Carnegie Hall at John Adams’s invitation.

Kalhor’s instrument, the kamancheh, is recognized as one of the oldest bowed string instruments. It has a spherical body, is about the length of a viola, and is played upright like a cello. The modern instrument usually has four strings and is tuned like a violin, but earlier examples often had three strings tuned in fourths (like a guitar) or fifths (like a fiddle). As with a banjo or fiddle, the tuning may be changed to better serve the harmonic world of a given piece. The performance tradition is improvisation within a system of rules and melodic/intervallic frameworks. There are similarities to Western scale/modal systems, and close kinships with the Indian raga tradition. Given its different vocabulary and basis in improvisation, Kalhor’s musical collaborations with Western-trained musicians often must navigate (as in Gallop of a Thousand Horses) between his lifelong musical language and the often fully notated world of the Western ensemble.

Kalhor thrives on collaborating with musicians with whom he shares mutual trust and understanding, including Yo-Yo Ma, a musical partner for more than 25 years. Venus in the Mirror is a very personal piece about which he writes,

As a musician, I have always cherished the profound privilege of interpreting the voice of my musical culture and instrument in moments of solitude and alongside those I hold dear. Over the past 50 years, this freedom has enabled me to define my perception of life through the Arts. Amidst a world in turmoil, a 25-year journey of friendship and collaboration with a remarkable individual is a milestone that calls for artistic commemoration. This piece serves not only as a celebration of our bond but also as a reflection on the social interests and complexities in general and during the past few years, particularly the current situation and social nuances of my home country and the brave young Iranians, especially Iranian women.

The concerto, Venus in the Mirror, is a testament to peace and friendship. It was born out of a desire to create a moment of tranquility amid chaos and to explore the delicate balance of human existence. This theme resonates deeply in these complicated times.

A work like Venus in the Mirror entails a fully notated orchestral score and solo part alongside his own part, whose notation is detailed but, the score tells us, serves as a kind of mnemonic as a basis for freer performance. (Contemporary anecdotes tell of Beethoven and Mozart, both great improvisers, performing premieres using only sketchy or non-existent solo parts, so this is not so different philosophically.) The title references an old Greco-Roman trope of the goddess Venus admiring her own unsurpassed beauty. The European ideal of the trope, illustrated in such works as Titian’s similarly titled 1555 Venere allo specchio, suggests the moral trap of vainglory. Here, however, the mirror—that is, the reflection of the kamancheh in the cello and vice versa—is a path by which the individual contemplates and expands knowledge of the self as well as of the counterpart. The two solo parts rest on different traditions, but strive for resonance, unity without duplication. An ideal performance is one in which the two reflections learn from one another and are enriched in the process. The orchestra is frequently a quietly active, resonant body for the soloists, at other times, particularly in the second movement, moving into the foreground, reflecting and expanding upon the soloists’ voices. The intricate melodic stream is anchored in an idea that connects individual lives to the fate of societies: “There is a ‘cry’ in the piece,” Kalhor said in an interview, “all the time there is a motive that you hear, one after another, and it repeats itself. So… it’s probably a cry of humanity, for freedom, for something better than we already have.”

Robert Kirzinger

Robert Kirzinger is a composer and writer.