Sahan Arzruni: By Women: Piano Works by Armenian Women Composers
AGBU/Positively Armenian

Any compilation purporting to represent the music of Armenian composers would include Komitas (1869-1935), but his absence here is explained by Sahan Arzruni's decision to focus exclusively on the country's women composers. This admired ethnomusicologist and Steinway artist also explored his heritage in an earlier three-disc anthology of Armenian piano music and an eight-disc set of instrumental and vocal Armenian music he co-produced. To say that Komitas is absent isn't entirely correct either, as the two pieces by Koharik Gazarossian were created from his manuscripts of folk songs (more on that later).

Arzruni's collection is marked by a stylistic diversity that reflects the incredible richness of the material these women have produced. Consider the project's closing pieces as indicative of how different their material sometimes is. Written for Arzruni and based on a liturgical chant created by the early Armenian composer Khosrovidukht in the eighth century (and still sung in the Armenian Church), the ten-minute Ode to Vahan by Alicia Terzian (b. 1934) augments crushing piano chords with unsettling atmospheric effects and wailing vocals, the cumulative effect of the sound design dark, ghostly, and macabre. After that disturbing intro, the now unaccompanied pianist delivers a haunting lament that's again joined by other elements, a woman's speaking voice and the anguished wailing of female voices. The album's closing piece, The Nightingale of Armenia, was written by Constantinople-born Lucy (Lusine) Hazarabedian (1863-82) when she was a sixteen-year-old student before dying tragically young six years later within the first year of her marriage. Irresistibly charming and radiant, her pretty polka piece is about as different in tone from Terzian's as could possibly be imagined.

Of course Terzian and Hazarabedian are merely two of the composers featured. Initiating the recording, Geghuni Chitchyan (b. 1929) is represented by two pieces, Sonatina a concise three-part pedagogical exercise and Prelude, a composition created for the sixtieth birthday of Armenian poetess and political activist Silva Kaputikyan. A bright “Allegro” introduces Sonatina and instantly showcases the arresting melodic character common to Armenian music; delicate and graceful, a contemplative “Moderato cantabile” follows before the mischievous “Presto” concludes the work in nimble fashion. Speaking of haunting, Prelude does exactly that as it delicately blossoms from its pensive beginning into a dazzling, emphatic expression.

A Constantinople-born student who studied in Paris with Paul Dukas and Lazare Lévy, Gazarossian (1907-67) lived across from Komitas, the founder of the Armenian National School of Music, and after he was exiled by the Ottoman Turks during the Armenian Genocide she copied a number of his manuscripts of folk songs and used them as the basis for her own works, including the two preludes performed by Arzruni. The mournful first, “My Child, Your Mother is Dead,” naturally exudes devastating heartbreak; in stark contrast, “Your Name Is Shushan” twinkles and sparkles, though a dramatic undercurrent is also audible.

Born in Beirut in 1983, Armenian-American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian created I Haven't the Words in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the turmoil associated with the early days of the pandemic. So titled because she could only articulate the heartbreak she was feeling through the piano, the material rhythmically chimes like a cry so forlorn it can't be stopped. Ethiopia-born in 1944, Sirvart Kazandjian wrote The Bells of Ani (Les Clôche d'Ani), which likewise chimes in suggesting the insistent tolling of bells, in Lausanne in 1971 as part of a volume titled À Ma Patrie.

August 2024