Movses Pogossian & Varty Manouelian: Serenade with a Dandelion
New Focus Recordings

Arriving four years after the inaugural Modulation Necklace collection, violinists Varty Manouelian and Movses Pogossian present a stunning four-volume sequel offering a panoramic overview of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Armenian music. The year isn't halfway done, but Serenade with a Dandelion is such a tremendous achievement it already qualifies as one of 2024's major releases. It's a stunning act of curation on the part of the married couple and captures the incredible richness of Armenian music, past and present. Chamber pieces, solo piano works, and art songs collectively attest to the breadth of music originating out of the mountainous Caucasus region between Asia and Europe.

Primarily recorded at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in Los Angeles between April 2021 and May 2023, the material is performed by Manouelian, Pogossian, the UCLA-based VEM Ensemble, and a talented pool of vocalists and instrumentalists. Thoughtfully organized, the release's four volumes present music scored for strings and woodwinds (discs one and three), soprano and piano (two), and piano and piano trio (four). Folk melodies surface throughout, often refracted through a modern composer's sensibility, and a lamenting tone informs much of it too. One comes way from the release's heartfelt performances with a clear grasp of the Armenian musical spirit the creators have dedicated themselves to presenting and preserving.

Whereas Komitas Vardapet and Alan Hovhaness might already be known to listeners with little previous exposure to Armenian music, other names will be brand new, and in that regard Serenade with a Dandelion performs a wonderful service in bringing attention to them. Alongside their pieces are ones by Vache Sharafyan, Tigran Mansurian, Artur Akshelyan, Aregnaz Martirosyan, Romanos Melikian, Kourken Alemshah, Artur Avanesov, Martin Ulikhanyan, Koharik Gazarossian, and Kristapor Najarian, with multiple works by Sharafyan, Mansurian, Avanesov, and Vardapet featured on the set. Manouelian and Pogossian are both affiliated with UCLA, incidentally, she a Lecturer of Violin at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and he a Distinguished Professor of Violin at the school as well as founder of its Armenian Music Program. Some of those joining them on the project, such as saxophonist Jan Berry Baker and violist Che-Yen Chen, are UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music colleagues; others teach at different schools, violinist Andrew McIntosh, for example, an instructor at the California Institute of the Arts.

As each volume merits commentary, we'll take each one in turn. Formally designated as the second volume in the Modulation Necklace series (the 2020 release identified as the first), the first disc presents five chamber works scored for different configurations. Arranged for two violins and performed, appropriately enough, by Manouelian and Pogossian, Sharafyan's Serenade with a Dandelion (2005) makes for a riveting scene-setter, with his String Quartet No. 2 (2022) closing out the disc. In between are Mansurian's Lachrymae (1999), Akshelyan's Sillage (2021), and Martirosyan's Chameleon (2022). The lamenting tone noted earlier emerges in the mournfulness of the haunting title work, and surfacing too is a vocal-like melismatic quality. Needless to say, the married couple gives voice to the plaintive dimension of the work with consummate feeling and technical precision. Likewise mournful is Mansurian's arresting Lachrymae, which dramatically alters the timbral terrain in coupling Manouelian's violin with Baker's tenor saxophone; the two also re-combine on the disc for Martirosyan's ever-playful Chameleon, this time with Baker on alto.

Set to the poetry of Zareh Melkonian, Akshelyan's Sillage introduces a vocal dimension when mezzo-soprano Danielle Segen joins violinists Pogossian and McIntosh, violist Chen, and cellist Coleman Itzkoff in a powerful rendering of the three-part work. Daring in conception and design, Sillage draws upon a panoply of gestures, from string groans and declamatory vocalizing to cryptic whispers and spidery pizzicato, with its delicate “IT” movement exuding an at-times beautiful Górecki-like quality. At disc's end, Sharafyan's single-movement String Quartet No. 2 bolts from the gate before settling into a series of alternately lyrical and seething passages, with the string players from Sillage attacking the nineteen-minute piece ferociously.

In contrast to the multiple musicians featured on disc one, the second, Armenian Art Songs, is performed by two only, Armenian-American soprano Shoushik Barsoumian and pianist Steven Vanhauwaert. That not only makes for a dramatic change in presentation but also a comparatively more intimate recital. Mansurian appears again, this time with Songs from Canti Paralleli, and Melikian and Alemshah are represented by two songs apiece. The disc's primarily devoted to Komitas Vardapet, however, with eight transporting songs by the influential composer sequenced first. Performed magnificently by Barsoumian and Vanhauwaert, Vardapet's song-structured folk transcriptions work their magic quickly when this emotionally wide-ranging set begins with the Canteloube-like rapture of “Across Mount Alagyaz” and carries on to the romantically supplicating “As I Came Down the Mountain,” the delightful folk paean “Walk On, Walk On!,” the sorrowful “Apricot Tree,” and despairing “Homeless.” As intimated by the titles, the subject matter concerns itself as much with the mountainous Armenian landscape as the experiences of those inhabiting it.

Melikian's “Glowing in the Garden” and “Weep Not” both feel like natural extensions of Vardapet's work, the stoicism advocated for in “Weep Not” calling forth a particularly affecting performance from Barsoumian. After Melikian's pair, unrequited love is the well from which Alemshah drinks for the expressive outpourings of “I Loved” and “Wish.” Mansurian's Songs from Canti Paralleli announces a clear separation from the others in its sophisticated wedding of European and Armenian art song when the emotional temperature in “Ode for the Lost Beloved” is so cooly calibrated. Even though the protagonist professes himself to be “shattered by the winds,” “Because of Your Love” is as poised, and anguish similarly pervades the bleak stillness of “And at Eventide” and desperation of “My Soul.”

The third disc—volume four—reinstates the chamber music presentation of the first, with five of the seven works performed by VEM Ensemble. Two Avanesov pieces, his suitably titled Wondrous It Is… (2023) and String Quartet (2019-23), appear, as do Mansurian's Tremors (1990), Gazarossian's Ta Mère N'est Plus (1961), Najarian's A Tale for Two Violins (2014), Hovhaness's String Trio, op. 201 (1962), and Ulikhanyan's Fantasy on Tigran Mansurian's Film Music (2020)—as varied a programme as the release has to offer. Everything's strings-based except for the latter, which adds clarinetist Phil O'Connor to string quartet. The prominent role accorded the woodwind gives the resonant, single-movement adventure the feel of a clarinet concerto, which is not to suggest the strings aren't vital to the design too. While most of the works are recent creations, the influence of Komitas and the Armenian folk tradition are still felt in the composers' heartfelt statements. Wondrous It Is…, for example, was born only a year ago, but in re-casting an eighth-century church hymn for a contemporary string trio, the elegiac and melismatic piece takes on a time-transcending character.

The string players heard on Sillage return for Avanesov's String Quartet, an unusual creation whose movements can be played in any order. Traditional titles are eschewed for ones such as “Cognitive Study of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder” and "Drammatico,” their incorporation of dissonance and microtonality mirroring the fractured temperament suggested by such titles. The gentle lyricism of the third movement “Quand l'aubespine fleurit…,” which explores variations on a French medieval hymn, arrests for deviating from the unsettling tone of the opening parts. Scored for string quintet (quartet plus second cello), Mansurian's single-movement Tremors progresses methodically through various episodes, some serene and some agitated, urgent, and even savage. While the three parts that make up Hovhaness's String Trio, Op. 201 total less than eight minutes, the work makes a strong impression nonetheless when it includes woozy pitches, plucked incantatory patterns, and dance-like figures. At disc's end, Najarian's A Tale for Two Violins bases its six parts on folk melodies the composer heard growing up. Ani and Ida Kavafian's earthy rendition of the work reflects the telepathic connection sisters often share, something detectable in the energized “Kef / Festivities (Loy Loy)” and mournful “Capture (Groung).”

Arriving after music of such variety, the fourth disc appeals for the directness and simplicity of its piano-centric presentation. Volume five's all Avanesov programme begins with selections from Feux follets and follows it with Tezeta (2022) and Tre-Sonate (2022), all three featuring the composer on piano and on the last piece accompanied by violinist Manouelian and cellist Edvard Pogossian. A “work in progress” currently totaling eleven volumes, Feux follets now comprises over 100 pieces, with nine of these tonally harmonic settings included here. There are moments when one might be reminded of Satie, Schubert, and even Ravel, but they ultimately brand themselves as Avanesov, full stop. If they do at times evoke fellow composers, it's no accident: they draw from different styles, periods, and artists and thus might suggest some connection to Bach, Berg, or Bartók. Sporting Brahmsian titles, “Intermezzo III” and “Intermezzo IV” seem to have as much to do with twilight jazz as salon music; “Hier ist Friede,” on the other hand, could pass for an Avanesov homage to Berg.

Inspired by Ethiopian popular music, the ten-minute fantasia Tezeta uses each note of the pentatonic scale as the foundation for its probing exploration, after which the four-hour-plus journey that is Serenade with a Dandelion reaches its final destination with the three-part Tre-Sonate, a neo-Baroque setting for piano trio that conforms to the standard fast-slow-fast design. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the twenty-seven-minute piece is the absence of an Armenian influence, with Avanesov largely opting for music indebted to Scarlatti, Bach, and the Western classical tradition. True to form, the work frames an aria-like slow movement (“Lento”) with an effervescent “Allegro assai” and breathless “Presto.” As excellently executed as it is, one part of me would have liked to see the fifth volume stick with solo piano exclusively.

May 2024