With this program spanning nearly a century, from Komitas' Dances written in the mid-1900s to pieces by my father, Gérard Gasparian, composed in the late 1980s, I aimed to highlight both the remarkable diversity of this repertoire and its profound unity. From the minimalist draft of Yerangi to the polyphonic virtuosity of the Capriccio, from the boundless lyricism of Spartacus to the percussive savagery of the Toccata, from the melodious simplicity of the Elegy to the tense chromaticism of the Sonata, one couldn't dream of more contrasting registers. The works on this program, however, all have one thing in common that expresses the true essence of Armenian music: They’re rooted in popular tradition. The very identity of this music – and the reason I feel such a deep, emotional connection to it – lies in the fact that it draws its inspiration from the folk heritage of the Armenian people: its songs, melodies, rhythms, and dances.

In his later years, SHURA CHERKASSKY (1909–1995) was regarded as one of the last ‘Romantics’ – a throwback to the so-called ‘golden age’ of pianism in the first decades of the 20th century. As a pupil of Josef Hofmann, he had an impeccable pedigree, but we tend to forget his long career meant he was already playing and recording in that ‘golden age’. Here then are these early recordings, complete for the first time, starting in the acoustic era with the young prodigy’s 1923 Victor discs. Much of the repertoire is unique in his discography, including his only recording of chamber music – the Rachmaninov cello sonata. The Tchaikovsky 2nd Concerto, Cherkassky’s earliest concerto recording, has never previously been reissued and reveals the 36-year-old artist at his virtuoso peak.

REVIEWS:

It is a joy to have all these recordings available together. Cherkassky was a supremely gifted and communicative pianist and there is something to admire in every piece in this collection.

-- MusicWeb International

Of special note are the many Chopin pieces and a smashing performance of the Fantasy in F minor from 1950. The latter has reasonably decent sound and gives us the opportunity of hearing what Cherkassky can do with one of Chopin’s masterworks.

Outstanding in-depth notes are supplied by Jonathan Summers, and special praise must be given to Seth B. Winner for his detail about restoration techniques. No lover of the art of the piano can afford to be without this set.

-- American Record Guide

A selection of delightful miniatures for violin and piano in original versions and arrangements by some of Armenia's most admired composers. This album marks the Naxos debut of acclaimed violinist Nikolay Madoyan. A selection of Armenian piano music can be heard on Naxos 8.573467. Works by Arutiunian, Bagdasarian, Barkhudarian, and Komitas can also be heard via albums on the Grand Piano label.

This remarkable album marks the recording debut of German violinist Julia Fischer as well as the beginning of her extraordinary partnership with Russian-born conductor Yakov Kreizberg, which would result in numerous Pentatone releases before the conductor’s untimely death in 2011. Together they tackle three Russian violin concertos (by Khachaturian, Prokofiev, and Glazunov) which have been tragically overlooked, shedding new light on these masterpieces. After releases on SACD and vinyl, this iconic album now returns in an affordable stereo version.

Recorded in the Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, this disc offers an opportunity to sample music by Armenian composers, here represented by three works for cello and orchestra, and is in a way a follow-up to the 2011 release [BIS-1849] which was also devoted to concertante works for cello by Armenian composers.

The program opens with Aram Khachaturian, whose 1946 concerto, which contains many Armenian and Georgian folkloric allusions and rhythmic dances like those of the Ashoug, has been described as being closer to a symphony with cello than to a concerto. The second work, Arno Babajanian’s Cello Concerto, is permeated by specific intonation rooted in Armenian folk music and folklore. The disc concludes with the cello concerto by the French composer of Armenian origin, Michel Petrossian, a work from 2022 entitled 8.4, an allusion to the book of Genesis, chapter 8, verse 4, where Mount Ararat is first mentioned. The work glorifies the symbolic and spiritual aspect of Ararat, the ‘sacred mountain’, and integrates Armenian and Byzantine liturgical chants.

The UK-based Alexander Chaushian, cello soloist in all of these works, is Armenian by birth, and has secured the expert support of the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra under its principal conductor Eduard Topchjan.

The expressive immediacy of Aram Khachaturian's music, with its sensuous melodic writing, vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive, resulted in a popularity equaled by few composers of his generation. Composed in 1936, the Piano Concerto was the work that established Khachaturian’s name. Cast in the customary three movements, it is scored for a sizable orchestra, with notable contributions from both side-drum and military drum in the percussion section. In the second movement there is also an extensive solo for a so-called ‘flexatone’; it is often put forward that Khachaturian in fact intended the part to be played on the musical saw, as it is on the present recording. Thirty years after the Concerto, the composer returned to the genre with his Concerto-Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. This time the score offers prominent roles for the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone, which contribute towards making this one of the composer’s most colorful works. The demanding solo parts are here performed by the young Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, with spirited support from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton. Sughayer made his acclaimed début as a recording artist with an album of Khachaturian's piano works and sandwiched between the two works with orchestra he here presents the piano version of one of the composer's best loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite with its yearning opening Waltz and closing Galop.

This program is a loving tribute to A. Khachaturian, the towering musical figure from my native Armenia and to G. Gershwin, the musical genius from my adopted home, the United States. These two composers are bridged here by the phenomenal pianist/ composer and Hollywood superstar, Oscar Levant. Some of the works on the album have been my loyal recital companions since childhood, the others have become such upon my immigration to America as a young adult. The release includes a world premiere recording of Oscar Levant’s jazzy Sonatina.

REVIEW:

Pianist Raffi Besalyan presents a collection of works from his native Armenia and his adopted U.S, and indeed, he offers vigorous performances of music by Aram Khachaturian and George Gershwin. Most interesting are the points where the two composers meet. Highly newsworthy is the world premiere of the Piano Sonatina by Gershwin specialist Oscar Levanty. The Sonatina has a unique post-Gershwin language and makes one wants to hear more of Levant’s original music. One is left with the impression of an odd kinship between Khachaturian and Gershwin that no one else has quite caught. The presence of some of Earl Wild’s Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin also works; the pieces bring a bit of the Russian virtuoso school, Besalyan’s specialty, to the proceedings. The whole thing is brilliantly performed and benefits from superb engineering at Sono Luminus’ Virginia studios. A satisfying cross-cultural essay.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Aram Il’yich Khachaturian was considered the ‘mouthpiece of the entire Soviet Orient’ and remains the most renowned of 20th-century Armenian composers. His unmistakable style came with an urge to invent new forms that reconciled Western practice with Eastern idiom. His ‘apprentice’ Fugues were revised and enriched with Recitatives that conjure the colorful voices of Khachaturian’s childhood in Tbilisi. Refreshingly original, amusing and provocative, the Children’s Albums belong to a tradition that reaches back to Bach, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. The Maltese pianist Charlene Farrugia studied with Dolores Amodio, and with Diana Ketler at the Royal Academy of Music in London. For several years she was mentored by Boris Petrushansky. She gained her doctorate in performance under Kenneth Hamilton with a thesis on piano repertory for the left hand. In 2018 she received Malta’s International Achievement Award, and was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2020. An ambassador of EMMA (Euro Mediterranean Music Academy) for Peace, under the auspices of UNESCO, she is currently on the teaching faculty at the Music Academy, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia.

In the 1960s Aram Khachaturian engaged in a number of experiments in which he covered terrain situated at an astonishing distance from the immediately appealing tone of the works that he had composed prior to those years. These experiments included the first of his three concert rhapsodies, in which he completely emancipated himself from the established forms that he had filled out in his concertos for piano, violin, and violoncello, which already then were world famous. While the virtuosic ambitions of the rhapsodies are in no way inferior to the technical demands of their older sister works, he now requires what is perhaps an even higher measure of expressive shared experiencing and solo messaging. The direct juxtaposition of the two concert violin compositions recorded by Antje Weithaas and Daniel Raiskin and the Rhineland-Palatinate State Symphony Orchestra conveys the extraordinarily grand leap into a “modernism” that hardly anybody would have thought possible for the author of the Sabre Dance. In 1971 Aram Khachaturian was honored for his rhapsodic risk-taking when he received the State Prize of the Soviet Union for his second concert trilogy.

Born in 1903, Aram Khachaturian became the most significant twentieth-century musical figure in the then Soviet Republic of Armenia. Many of his most important works date from the first half of his career. The expressive immediacy of his music, conditioned by his Armenian heritage with its sensuous melodic writing, its vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive – all resulted in a popularity equalled by few composers of his generation. Although he is primarily associated with large orchestral scores – including the ballets Gayaneh and Spartacus, perennial favourites with concert audiences – he also left a number of works for piano solo. For his debut disc, the Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer has put together a recital spanning from the ample and demanding Sonata to the delightful Children’s Album, consisting of ten miniatures, in turn playful and poignant. The recital closes with a piece which did a great deal to establish Khachaturian’s name near the outset of his international career. Composed in 1932 (allegedly in a single evening), the Toccata in E flat minor soon established itself among the showpieces of the modern repertoire and was to become a calling-card for aspiring virtuosi. Iyad Sughayer was born in 1993 in Amman, where he received his early training. At the age of 13, Iyad moved from Jordan to study at the Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, UK.

REVIEWS:

Much of the music in this recital is both technically and musically challenging, yet Sughayer sounds entirely at one with its impassioned eloquence, scorching intensity and coruscating musical patterning. He captures the music’s essence with such a close sense of recreative identity that it feels on occasion as though he could be composing it as he goes along. An outstanding debut.

– BBC Music Magazine

This disc is unreservedly recommended to lovers of magnificent pianism and outstanding recorded fidelity. The style, technique and taste of the performer and the sonics in both formats (unquestionably helped along by the remarkable acoustics of the Stoller Hall) will amply reward the curious, more than the attractions of Aram Khatchaturian’s defiantly uneven piano music. Having said that, while I have no doubt whatsoever that Iyad Sughayer will in time make far more important recordings than this, I applaud his imagination and sense of adventure in kicking off his career with Khachaturian as opposed to more tried and tested repertoire. BIS appear to have unearthed another piano-playing diamond.

– MusicWeb International

Aram Khachaturian was an established Soviet artist when he realized an old dream of his in the first postwar year 1946 and composed a grand, quasi-symphonic work for his main instrument. Following his spectacular concertos for piano and for violin, which in the meantime had taken the world by storm, he now surprised his public with music that only gradually reveals its fiery temperament: we hear very clearly how well the composer knew the violoncello, the instrument on which during his study years he had practiced until his fingers hurt, in all its special qualities and how precisely he knew how to bring out its expressive and velvety autumnal personality. Neither this concerto nor the Rhapsody composed by Khachaturian seventeen years later for Mstislav Rostropovich can be mastered with mere virtuoso ostentation. Both works demand the services of a soloist who does not misunderstand the unprecedented difficulties of his parts as an opportunity for self-display, and Daniel Raiskin has found such an interpreter in the person of the Swedish cellist Thorleif Thedéen: sovereign in every technical respect, he surmounts the enormous challenges even when he removes himself from the intensive dialogues with the orchestra and – left entirely to his own devices – captures the whole of Khachaturian in the monologues.

Flutist Sharon Bezaly has dazzled listeners and critics all over the globe, even being called “God’s gift to the flute.” With almost 40 releases to her name, her wide-ranging discography includes both standard repertoire and selections written specifically for her. This release is owed to two fellow world-class flutists, Jean-Pierre Rampal and Gunilla von Bahr. Rampal was the flutist who arranged Aram Khachaturian’s virtuosic violin concerto for the flute, at the suggestion of the composer. “Dances with the Winds,” Einojuhani Rautavaara’s 1974 composition, is dedicated to Gunilla von Bahr. Rautavaara’s “Dances with the Winds,” is an interesting addition, as the first and last movements are scored for bass flute, while the second movement is written for piccolo, and the third for alto flute. In a later revision, the composer replaced the bass flute with the alto. Bezaly includes both versions on this recording.