TEHRAN – “The Karun Symphony” is scheduled to be performed by the Tehran Symphony Orchestra during concerts in Tehran in November.

The symphony was composed by Majid Entezami to play up the construction of the Karun-3 and Karun-4 dams, both of which have devoured part of the Iranian cultural heritage over the past six years.

It was sponsored by the Iran Music Association and the Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company.

The symphony is comprised of a variety of happy rhythms, Entezami told the Persian service of MNA on Monday.

He said that drum, guitar, bass guitar, harp and two Iranian percussion instruments, daf and dammam, will be the auxiliary instruments used by the orchestra during the concerts.

Due to the complexity of the symphony, it requires twenty rehearsals, which will commence as soon as the exact dates of the concerts are fixed, Entezami said.

He visited the Karun-3 and Karun-4 dams in 2010 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 once 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.

MMS/YAW

END