Sergey & Lusine Khachatryan MY ARMENIA Dedicated to te 100th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide

Like for every nation, the space in which the musical Armenian culture developed corresponds to the nation’s development itself. According to some scientists, Armenians’ attested origins are dated from the second millenary B.C. The history of musical Armenian culture can be divided in two big categories: traditional and artistic music. Until the middle of the 19th century, traditional Armenian music used to be monodic in its whole. This monadic Armenian music can also be divided in three other categories: popular traditional music, traditional professional music, known as the Gusans’ or Aschughens’ art (Armenian equivalent for troubadours), and at last the artistic professional Middle Ages music, spiritual music or religious vocal art in Armenia. In the middle of the 19th century appear the first musical artistic works from Armenian composers. In the second half of this century, bases and specificities of the artistic Armenian music start to become important, freed from the European influence and reinforced through Armenia’s wish to be independent. These problems touching the Armenian culture have been resolved by Komitas Vardapet, who made traditional and religious Armenian music the frame of the artistic Armenian music. Komitas Vardapet (1869 – 1935) is therefore considered the founder of the national Armenian composition school.
Komitas Vardapet (his religious name; his civil name was Soghomon Soghomonian) was a composer, musician, ethnologist, music specialist, pedagogue, choir leader, singer and poet. He was formed at the Georgian seminary of Edchmiatzin (the siege of the Armenian Church). He then studied from 1896 to 1900 in Berlin in the Richard Schneider conservatory and at the imperial Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University). He is one of the founders of the Berlin branch of the Internationale musicology society. In Berlin, Paris, or Vienna, he played several times for concerts and scientific conferences. In 1915 starts the Armenian genocide and Komitas Vardapet is deported with a group of intellectual Armenians from Istanbul to the Syrian Desert. Through the intervention of foreign artists and intellectuals he escapes deportation; but right after, abominations he saw during the deportation and he felt with his whole body, started a very hard crisis for him. He dies in 1935 in Paris. (naïve)

Sergey & Lusine Khachatryan BRAHMS Sonatas

When I listen to Khachatryan (b. 1985), I’m reminded of another young, award-winning violinist of approximately the same age, this one Russian, Ilya Gringolts (b. 1982). The reminder, however, is one of contrasts rather than of similarities. You see, I also have Gringolts’s recording of the Sibelius Concerto with Neeme Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, made not long after Khachatryan made his recording of the piece with Emmanuel Krivine and the Sinfonia Varsovia, and the differences are stark. Both violinists are virtuosos of the first order, nowadays something that almost goes without saying. But Gringolts belongs to what I call the “slash and burn” school of playing, which is to say that sheer beauty of sound is not infrequently sacrificed on the altar of go-for-broke risk-taking and the coarsening of tone that inevitably comes with the hard-driving performance approach.
That said, I’m fully aware that preferences in manners and styles of playing are largely a matter of taste, and so it’s with that in mind that I count Sergey Khachatryan a violinist much more to my personal liking than Gringolts. From the very opening strains of Brahms’s G-Major Sonata, I hear in Khachatryan not just a violinist with impeccable technique and radiant tone, but an artist of high intelligence and a musician of the highest ethical sensibilities. To no small degree, his Brahms reminds me of David Oistrakh’s, with Gina Bauer in the First Sonata and with Richter in the Second and Third sonatas.
Nothing is exaggerated, overstated, or pressed. No gratuitous portamentos interrupt the smooth flow of the lines. Only the natural ebb and flow of Brahms’s phrases, with which Khachatryan and sister Lusine rise and fall in sublime unanimity, are made manifest in these gorgeous readings. Just listen to the transcendent beauty of the second theme in the first movement of the G-Major Sonata, to how it expands to embrace an exalted state of ecstasy. In one breath, this has gone from being just another recording of Brahms’s violin sonatas to my absolute favorite, surpassing in wonder and glory even the Stefan Jackiw and Max Levison version on Sony whose virtues I extolled in 34:4.
Everything I’ve said and then some applies to the Khachatryans’ readings of the A-Major and D-Minor sonatas as well. Listen to and be gripped by the terrifying tale Brahms tells in the last movement of the D-Minor Sonata. Never have the parallels to the first movement of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata been clearer. But for me, what makes Sergey’s performance so transfixing is that he delivers Brahms’s uncharacteristic outburst of spite and spleen with nary a scrape or scratch of the bow. How much sharper is the cut from a scalpel than from a blunt blade.
Even if you have half-a-dozen or more recordings of these sonatas on your shelf, shift them around, throw one out, do whatever you have to do to make room for this one; it’s truly special. (FANFARE: Jerry Dubins)

Sergey Khachatryan / Kurt Masur / Orchestre National de France SHOSTAKOVICH Violin Concertos

It's probably unfair to compare Sergey Khachatryan's 2006 recording of Shostakovich's violin concertos accompanied by Kurt Masur leading the Orchestre National de France with David Oistrakh's classic recordings of the works: the 1956 Mitropoulos/New York Philharmonic First and the 1967 Kondrashin/ Moscow Philharmonic Second. Not only was Oistrakh the dedicatee for both works, he was far and away the greatest of Soviet violinists, and his virile, soulful, impassioned, and supremely virtuosic interpretations have an authenticity and immediacy that no subsequent violinist has yet touched. But although Khachatryan, like every other violinist who's ever played the works, can't really compare with Oistrakh, how does he compare with the other mere mortals who've taken on the works? In a word: okay -- not great, certainly, but okay. It's not his technique -- as his First Concerto cadenza amply demonstrates, the young Armenian is surely in the same league as the best of his contemporaries in sheer bravura virtuosity -- and it's not entirely his interpretations -- he seems to grasp the First's heart of darkness and expresses it with sympathy and compassion. It's that Khachatryan's interpretation of the Second has nowhere near the same depth of understanding as his First. Admittedly, the Second is a much more enigmatic work than the First, but Khachatryan seems unable to fathom its tone and the result is a performance that stands back too far from the piece to make a persuasive case for it. Masur's proficient but not especially insightful conducting and the Orchestre National de France's professional but inspired playing aren't much help to Khachatryan. In the end, they're are performances worth hearing from a violinist worth listening to -- but they're no match for Oistrakh's. Naïve's sound, while close and clean, lacks warmth and presence.

(James Leonard)

Sergey Khachatryan BACH Sonatas & Partitas

Sergey Khachatryan's unaccompanied Bach is decidedly "old school" in its tapered phrasings and dynamics, with an emphasis on nuance and tone color rather than linear shape. You immediately glean this from the subito pianos, tenutos, and oozing legatos of the C major sonata Fugue. Yet if this particular style of Bach playing holds appeal, then Khachatryan's attractive, sweetly singing timbre and generally spot-on choice of tempos will satisfy on their own terms, to say nothing of the violinist's brisk yet relaxed delivery in fast, virtuosic movements like the G minor sonata's Presto, the B minor partita's second Double, and the E major partita's opening Prelude. However, for an ideal fusion of tonal allure and contrapuntal cogency, James Ehnes remains first choice, notably in the fugues and the stronger architectural unity that distinguishes his pacing of the great D minor Chaconne. Excellent annotations and sound. (Jed Distler)

Sergey, Lusine & Vladimir Khachatryan BRAHMS - BACH - RAVEL - CHAUSSON - WAXMAN Music for Violin and Piano

This wide-ranging programme in EMI's Debut series is like a musical calling-card for Sergey Khachatryan (born in Armenia in 1985), who submits himself to daunting tests of virtuosity (triumphantly surmounted in Ravel and Waxman) and musicianship. And it's his musical abilities that make the biggest impact, along with his fine, rich, malleable tone.
In the Waxman it's the dark, fatalistic side of Carmen that predominates. The Brahms springs no interpretive surprises--the second and fourth movements are particularly successful, the Adagio splendidly expressive at a flowing tempo, the finale played with driving energy.
In Brahms and Ravel, Khachatryan is partnered by his sister (she, too, looks very young in the photos, but her age isn't stated). Her contribution is very positive, especially in the Brahms finale and the later stages of Tzigane, when both violin and piano revel in the music's kaleidoscopic textures while having fun with idiomatic rubato and tempo variation.
The Bach 'Chaconne' is impressive, too, for its polish and fine rhythmic control, but Khachatiyan does have something to learn about playing 18th-century music — in particular, to use the slurs to add light and shade to the phrasing, rather than ironing out the difference between slurred and separate notes. His father provides a very sensitive accompaniment in the Chausson. This is another beautiful performance, though ideally I'd have liked more tonal variety and sense of culmination as the Poenze progresses.
Sergey Khachatryan will, I'm sure, further extend his range and capabilities, but meanwhile it's a great pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a talented artist. (Duncan Druce, Gramophone)