Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra

Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra is a studio album by Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) conducted by André Previn. It was released in 1971 on the EMI-owned record labels HMV and Angel, in Britain and America, respectively, after Shankar and Previn had premiered the eponymous concerto at London's Royal Festival Hall on 28 January that year. The album was produced by Christopher Bishop and recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Contents

• Track listing
• Personnel
• Songs
• References

Shankar began composing the work, his first concerto, after receiving a commission from the LSO in mid November 1970. The idea of creating an Indian classical work for a full Western orchestra, accompanied by his sitar, appealed to Shankar following his forays into chamber music with violinist Yehudi Menuhin – issued on West Meets East (1967) and West Meets East, Volume 2 (1968). He dedicated the concerto to his music guru (teacher) Allauddin Khan, who was in poor health at the time. Khan's composition Raga Manj Khamaj was one of the four ragas that Shankar adapted for the project.

The concerto received acclaim from some reviewers. In America, the LP cover carried a quote from The Guardian's music critic, Edward Greenfield, that read: "If East has to meet West, then few musicians have achieved it with such open joy as Ravi Shankar." According to author Peter Lavezzoli, however, other critics considered it to be "a bastardization of two distinct forms of music". The US release of Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra, in November 1971, coincided with the world premiere of Shankar's autobiographical film Raga. The album peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Best Selling Classical LP's chart in February 1972. In November that year, EMI's US affiliate, Capitol Records, described the commercial performance of the album as the company's "biggest surprise" of 1972, adding that it had "sold like a pop record".

In addition to subsequent performances by Shankar, the concerto has been performed in concert by his daughter Anoushka Shankar. The second and third movements – based on the ragas Sindhi Bhairavi and Adana – were included on the four-disc box set Ravi Shankar: In Celebration (1996). The LSO project led to further collaborations between Shankar and Western classical musicians, such as Zubin Mehta, who conducted his concerto Raga Mala in 1981.