Mah Banoo, Purcell Room, London review: A triumphant vindication for this all-female group

Persian classical music goes back to the fourth century BCE and enjoyed its first golden age in the sixth century CE, after which its influence spread through the entire Arab world. Yet its practitioners were periodically persecuted as purveyors of an immoral pleasure. When Muslim musicians were proscribed in the 17th century, Jewish musicians carried on the torch.

Fast-forward to the late 20th century and you find history repeating itself with a vengeance, but this time with women in the firing line: the Ayatollah Khomeini and his mullahs forbade women to perform for mixed audiences of male and females, and that prohibition still stands today.

All of which makes the existence of the all-female group Mah Banoo –“beautiful as the moon” – remarkable. These young women, who are all virtuosi, can’t perform publicly in Iran, and on principle they refuse to perform there for female-only audiences, though they did recently consent to the release of a video on YouTube, since that medium was not covered by the mullahs’ edict.

That video became so popular, earning millions of enthusiastic hits, that the law was hastily redrafted to include YouTube, thus closing what had looked like a promising loophole.

Their London concert is a triumphant vindication of their persistence, with intricate performances on string instruments by their leader Majid Derakhshani (the token male), lovely songs by Sara Hamidi, and exquisite solos by their spike-fiddle virtuoso Nazanin Ghanizadeh. It all makes for an enchanted evening: let’s hope they return soon.