Sarkis Barkhudarian - Piano Works (Mikael Ayrapetyan)

Information

Composer: Sarkis Barkhudarian

• Four Oriental Dances
• Twelve Armenian Dances
• Piano Pieces, Series 1 & 2

Mikael Ayrapetyan, piano

Date: 2018

Label: Grand Piano

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Review

More power to percipient pianist Mikael Ayrapetyan in ceaselessly developing the already wide compass of his Secrets of Armenia music project. We should also be thankful to Grand Piano for supporting Avrapetyan's quest. It can only be to the good that we get the opportunity to hear so much unknown music.

Sarkis Barkhudarian was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia). His childhood world included the noises of street musicians and his home resounded to Armenian folksongs. He entered the Tbilisi Music Institute in 1900 and in his early teens visited the cities of Ani, Alexandropol (now Gyumri) and Etchmiadzin (now Vagharshapat) - the first and last of these names may be familiar from the symphonies of Alan Hovhaness. He later won a place at the Berlin Hochschule. Circumstances soon found him studying with Jāzeps Vītols and Vasily Pavlovich Kalafati in St Petersburg. There he met another Armenian composer Aleksandr Spendiarian (or Spendiarov, 1871–1928), whose Almast and Crimean Sketches appeared as makeweights on the 1975 EMI LP ASD 3106 and whose Almást: Persian March and Yerevanian Studies were on ASV CDDCA1037.

Barkhudarian's earliest interpretations of Armenian folk themes were published in St Petersburg (1913) and these went down well with Glazunov and Liadov. Glazunov later said of Barkhudarian: "His works are infused with the bright colours of the Armenian nation, and distinguished for their sincerity, elegance and harmony of form." Graduating in 1917, he returned to Tbilisi and, after the Russian Revolution, became Georgia's Head of the Music Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education. The need to write music never relented and he continued to compose. There were concert tours of Georgia, Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan. In 1923, he was appointed Head of Composition at Tbilisi Conservatory and stayed there until the early 1950s, not that this held him back from regular visits to Armenia where he also taught at Yerevan Conservatory. His pupils included Arutiunian (1920–2012) and Muradeli (1908–1970). In addition to a large number of solo piano pieces, Barkhudarian wrote the ballet Narine (1938), the children’s opera Keri-Kuchi (1945), and other pieces for orchestra (including a symphonic poem, Anoush (1916) excerpted in the Piano Pieces), for brass band, chamber ensemble, stage and film.

Grand Piano now admit us to the company of thirty-six dipping, curtseying, murmuring, chattering and quick-stepping fantasies and dances by Barkhudarian. He may have lived well into the period of Western modernism and experiment but his music shrugs off such influences. The pieces here are all quite short and will not tax your attention. The Nocturne possesses a refined complexity and suggests a shaded spring. The effect is enhanced by a hypnotic ostinato. Equally gentle is the gracious Dance of the Bride and Dance of the Rural Girls from the twelve Oriental Dances. The Four Oriental Dances (1910–13) are a product of his St Petersburg sojourn. There's more than a scintilla of Rimsky-Korsakov in the wild round that is the Third Oriental Dance. The same can be discerned in Naz Par. The burly rhythmic qualities of the Provocative Dance are well set out and their roughness is replaced with the subtle and burblingly fast Watercolour from the first set of piano pieces. This delicate line of inspiration carries over into the fast-pulsed Boots-Dragonfly. The Dance of Farewell and Festive Dance have a rounded romantic vigour. By contrast Gulnara's Dance is all moonlight and play. Anoush's Sorrow warmly encapsulates, in a cocooned atmosphere, the mood suggested by its title. The disc (and series 2) ends with the gentle cradling of the Lullaby of Shushani.

The recording is unapologetically and beneficently forward-placed; no detail seems to escape. As usual, the liner note is by the pianist and the background set out in this review is indebted to that source. The note is in English and German.

If you already have a yen for Ayrapetyan's explorations then you can safely add this Barkhudarian volume, with its premiere recordings, to the ones you already have by Stepanian, Arutiunian, Abramian, Komitas, Bagdasarian and Babajanian. It will also speak to you if you are drawn in by Kirsten Johnson's two Rumanian collectionson Guild: Këngë and Rapsodi. Another world opens out for the curious.

— Rob Barnett

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Sargis Barkhudaryan (26 August 1887 – 25 October 1973) was an Armenian composer, pianist and educator. Born in Tbilisi (Georgia), he studied locally before continuing his training in Berlin and St Petersburg under prominent teachers, including Jazeps Vitols. His Four Oriental Dances (1910–13) were among the first piano works to incorporate Armenian folk themes. Barkhudaryan later held leading academic posts in Tbilisi and Yerevan, mentoring composers such as Alexander Arutiunian. Celebrated for his lyrical piano miniatures, he also composed orchestral, ballet and operatic works, earning numerous Soviet honors.

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Mikael Ayrapetyan (born 1984) is an Armenian pianist, composer and researcher. Following his debut at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium, he has championed the works of numerous Armenian composers through performances, recordings and his Secrets of Armenia project, initiated during his studies at the Moscow Conservatory. Trained in the Russian piano tradition, Ayrapetyan performs a broad repertoire from Baroque to contemporary music, with a particular focus on rarely heard Armenian works. He is a recipient of Armenia's State Prize and has received critical acclaim for his many award-winning recordings.

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