On Wednesday, February 11, Scotland and Seagram’s 100 Pipers in collaboration with the British Council, Calcutta, presented Samaagam, featuring the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in concert with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan at the Science City auditorium. Samaagam, a meeting of East and West through the fusion of two musical cultures, is the name given to the sarod concerto composed by the great exponent of this traditional, north Indian instrument.

David Murphy, the spare and sprightly young conductor of the SCO, began the programme with a lively Mozart divertimento, played with brisk energy and skill by a considerably large chamber orchestra. This was followed by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8. The orchestra, suitably equipped with brass, woodwinds and percussion, gave this familiar work quite a competent presentation.

There was then a five-minute break, at the end of which there was a rather ambiguous announcement regarding the composition that was to follow. In a newspaper interview on the same day, the Ustad had endeavoured to explain his first sarod concerto as an attempt to get a hundred European classical musicians to play symphonically with an instrument of the East.

The sarod is a beautifully ornate north Indian instrument of antiquity and tradition. Among many other features, it has several plucked strings, including drones.The neck and resonator are carved from a single block of wood. Understandably, this instrument does not have the powerful resonance of the hollower, Western, stringed instruments, and therefore requires electronic amplification, which was an unfortunate distraction and an auditory mismatch with the various sounds of the chamber orchestra against which it was pitted.

Amjad Ali Khan began with the lengthy exercise of tuning, with the additional assistance of what I presumed was an electronic drone. He then said a few words about the meaning of the composition and described certain fingering techniques like the use of the fingernails (pizzicato) and of the flat fingers for a softer sound. He started with a long solo alap, which meandered its way quite melodiously to a sparkling climax with an exciting tabla accompaniment. Then the orchestra came in and made a vague attempt at melodic imitation, with each section playing in unison. The lack of harmonic conviction could only mean hastily-thought-out scoring. I wonder who did that — or perhaps, who didn’t. At the end of this movement, several people made their way out, including this critic. Enough is enough. Fusion is, after all, fusion.