TEHRAN -- Recording “The Karun Symphony” has begun at the Pop Studio in Tehran.

As a first step, the stringed instruments’ parts are scheduled to be recorded for the symphony, which was composed by Majid Entezami, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Friday.
The idea for composing the symphony was suggested in August 2010 to dramatize the construction of the Karun-3 and Karun-4 dams as a “national project”, both of which have devoured part of Iranian national cultural heritage over the past six years.
Entezami composed the symphony based on an agreement signed between the Iran Music Association and the Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company in August 2010.
He visited the Karun-3 and Karun-4 dams to draw inspiration for composing his opus.
“I was beguiled by the grandeur of the dams. I felt proud of my nationality when I learned that the dams had been designed and built by Iranian engineers without any help from foreign experts,” Entezami had said.
Located about 28 kilometers east of the city of Izeh in Khuzestan Province on the Karun River, the Karum-3 Dam came on line in late 2004, flooding the Izeh region, which is home to numerous Elamite sites and several others dating back to the Stone Age.
In addition, a number of historical sites, most of them dating back to the Qajar era, and several graveyards and villages containing much valuable anthropological information were submerged when the Karun-4 Dam became operational in March 2010.
The dam was constructed on the Karun River, four kilometers from where the Bazoft and Armaneh rivers meet on the border of Chahar-Mahal-o Bakhtiari and Khuzestan provinces.