Naresh Sohal was one of the most remarkable composers of Western classical music of his generation. In the course of his career, he produced a body of work that included major pieces for orchestra, innovative chamber works, a ballet score, two music theatre pieces, the score for a French feature film, ghazals and songs for the Bollywood director Dev Anand.
He received eight commissions from the BBC and had more than forty radio broadcasts of his work. In 1987, he was awarded a Padma Shri (Order of the Lotus) by the Government of India for his services to Western music.
Naresh grew up in Jalandhar. He studied science at DAV College from 1955 until 1961 but showed particular prowess in music and cricket. He taught himself to play the harmonica and often provided entertainment for his peers. He and his friend Inder (guitar) shared a platform with Jagjit Singh at a college prize-giving in 1961 attended by the President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and at the All-India Youth conference that same year.
Naresh left college to go to Bombay to seek employment in the film industry. But while he was there, he heard Beethoven’s Third Symphony on All India Radio. This was a powerful introduction to the sound world of the Western orchestra. He decided there and then to become a composer in the Western tradition and travelled to the UK in 1962 with this as his goal.
He gained employment as a music copyist with the music publisher, Boosey & Hawkes. Here, he learned, at first hand, the techniques of contemporary composition. At the same time, he was mentored by the composer Jeremy Dale Roberts. His talent was quickly recognised, and he received support from the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) and the Arts Council of Great Britain. His first orchestral work, ‘Asht Prahar’, was given its first public performance in 1970 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Norman del Mar at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Critics noted his unique musical voice.
Over the next thirty plus years, he went on to produce a wide range of works, receiving commissions for the BBC Promenade Concerts in 1982 and 2010. His works were performed both nationally and internationally by orchestras that included the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony and the Berlin Staatskapelle orchestras. His music was championed by maestros Zubin Mehta and the late Sir Andrew Davis.
Naresh did not mix the musical techniques of East and West, but he never lost sight of his philosophical origins. He made many settings of the poetry of Tagore; ‘The Divine Song’, a piece for narrator and orchestra, is a setting of Chapter 2 of ‘The Bhagavad Gita’; his orchestral work ‘Tandava Nritya’ describes the eternal dance of destruction and re-creation; ‘Lila’ is a musical account of the process of enlightenment; ‘Hymn of Creation’, a large-scale work for orchestra, is based on mantras from the Rig Veda and is set both in English and Sanskrit. In the latter part of his career, he broke new ground by using some of India’s colloquial languages in his work. For example, in ‘Poems of the Five Rivers’ he sets poems by Waris Shah and Bulleh Shah in their original Punjabi.
Through his vision, talent and determination Naresh made a rare contribution to the cultural life of his adopted homeland while showcasing some of the most profound spiritual insights of his mother country.
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