Exotic rhythms, exuberant and unmistakably Georgian folk melodies, woodwind solos filled with longing, passionate writing for the primary soloist, and an immediately appealing orchestral palette – lovers of Khachaturian’s classic Violin Concerto will recognize in his Cello Concerto all the elements that make this composer a 20th century favorite.

The work for cello and orchestra is not as well-known as its counterpart, but that is an injustice which this new recording attempts to counteract. Dmitry Yablonsky is the excellent soloist, and his account makes it clear that a potential audience favorite has been withheld from the standard repertoire for too long.

Khachaturian no longer needs introduction to Western audiences. He is known from his ballets Gayaneh and Spartacus, and from his Violin Concerto, as a composer who pleases both the crowds and the critics. The Violin Concerto was premiered by legendary violinist David Oistrakh, and has been a staple of concert programs and new CDs ever since. It has been recorded by the likes of Leonid Kogan, Itzhak Perlman, Henryk Szeryng, Ruggiero Ricci and, more recently, Julia Fischer. The Cello Concerto has not received anything like that level of advocacy. By my count, this is just the seventh major recording of the stereo era. The work’s relative obscurity may have something to do with its gloomier overall atmosphere, its more troubled emotional state, and, worst of all, the harsh denunciations leveled at it by Soviet authorities after its premiere in 1946. Let us hope that this fantastic recording will inspire its return to the mainstream.

The Cello Concerto opens with an orchestral introduction of only about a minute’s duration. It is heavy with foreboding and tapers off into one of the many moody, mysterious clarinet solos which punctuate the first movement. Then the cello enters and announces the memorable first theme. After that the movement is off to the races: brilliant color, skilful thematic development, and high drama mix in the same folksy idiom which characterizes so much of this composer’s music. A delicious clarinet solo prepares the way for the second subject, and there is a sudden reminiscence of the Dies irae theme by the orchestra as the cellist enters, but the Catholic hymn is warded off before it can really settle in. The development reaches its peak with a deliciously colorful dance in the seventh minute, before the cellist’s cadenza skillfully combines the movement’s dueling moods of exuberance and introspection.

The second movement, beginning with an eerie flute solo, is a dramatic, stern creation in which we see only glimmers of the consoling ‘big tune’. One might compare it to a view of a harsh landscape with a mere hint of lush green far in the distance. The lyrical heart of this movement is evasive and fleeting.

The finale brings the expected fireworks, but it also presents the main structural flaw: the energy level in the second half of the finale consistently decreases until the lightning-fast coda shocks the music out of its slumber. Perhaps this is partially the responsibility of the performers, but I doubt it. Dmitry Yablonsky’s cello playing is consistently riveting; his regular work as a conductor on Naxos has concealed the fact that he is a very fine cellist indeed. What’s more, the Russian Philharmonia plays superbly throughout. The orchestra itself is somewhat of an enigma — it was previously known as the TV 6 Orchestra and does not appear to give public concerts — but the level of the playing here is impressive. As mentioned, the first-desk wind players are especially praiseworthy. And, even when the final coda seems to come too soon, it is a mark of Khachaturian’s skill that we are left hungering for more rather than wishing there had been less.

Luckily there is more. The Concerto-Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra is a twenty-four minute work in a single movement. It makes even greater demands on Yablonsky than the longer concerto. Within a minute we are launched into an extremely long and grueling solo cadenza, in which the cellist presents all the themes we will soon be hearing amid much fiercely difficult passage-work. The Concerto-Rhapsody is, perhaps, more interesting on first listen, because its musical idiom is largely more advanced and more forbidding than a typical Khachaturian work. Oddly, on repeated hearings it is the simpler, more tuneful concerto which is more rewarding. The Concerto-Rhapsody, which occasionally quotes the Dies irae idea from the earlier work, simply does not have enough thematic material to justify its twenty-four minutes. There is a frankly dull and repetitive stretch in the development passage, which is a pity because the titanic cadenza had commanded our attention so powerfully. Near the end Khachaturian pitches in a few spectacular moments for the percussion and brass which recall the peasant dances from Gayaneh, but this comes after an awful lot of dithering over a very small number of interesting musical ideas. By contrast, the Concerto is both a potential crowd-pleaser and a satisfying, intelligent piece.

This recording makes me wonder just why the Cello Concerto isn’t a smash hit in concert halls across the world right now. It’s instantly appealing, emotionally complex, fantastically orchestrated, virtuosic, and filled with an abundance of good tunes. At the very least, one would expect more recordings to be available, but there is almost no major competition for this Yablonsky performance. A Chandos disc featuring Raphael Wallfisch puts the Concerto in a more elegiac light and features very polished, expressive cello playing, though the acoustic is not always flattering to the cello itself and the London Philharmonic winds are not as characterful as their Russian counterparts. Wallfisch has a definite edge on Yablonsky in the expressive slow movement, but Yablonsky takes extra trouble to make the repeated-note theme in the finale genuinely interesting and varied, where Wallfisch simply runs the notes together. The coupling on the Chandos disc is the Violin Concerto, which most Khachaturian fans will likely already have.

I have not heard the Regis recording with cellist Marina Tarasova, but the disappointed reviews on this site by Michael Cookson and Jonathan Woolf suggest that that performance, a full four minutes slower than Yablonsky’s, is not a good advocate of the piece. A Philips CD starring Christine Walevska and conductor Eliahu Inbal is long out of print.

This new recording featuring Dmitry Yablonsky is, then, the finest available performance of the Khachaturian Cello Concerto, and as such merits the strongest possible recommendation. If the Concerto-Rhapsody does not always reach the same level of inspiration, Yablonsky’s playing is still breathtaking. These are recordings which any fan of Khachaturian would delight to have, and which should commend a richly enjoyable but long-forgotten concerto to a much wider audience. Rich, clear sound completes the package.

-- Brian Reinhart, MusicWeb International

Armenian composer Khachaturian (1903-1978) Ballet Music highlights recorded in 1993-1994 including Sabre Dance from Gayane, Spartacus & Masquerade performed by the St. Petersburg State Symphony Ochestra conducted by Andre Anichanov.

Despite the popularity of Aram Khachaturian’s ubiquitous ballet music, his works for piano have been relatively neglected. This release, featuring two World Premiere Recordings, combines arrangements of popular pieces such as Masquerade – Suite (Arr. A. Dolukhanian) with less familiar works such as the composer’s early Poem and the abstract Piano Sonata. The Armenian pianist Kariné Poghosyan has won numerous awards as well as performed in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls. At the Manhattan School of Music she completed her D.m.A. in a record-breaking two years with a thesis on Aram Khachaturian’s works for piano. She is currently based in New York, where she teaches at the Manhattan School of Music.

This disc was one of Ian Lace’s Recommended Original Film Score Recordings when first issued at full price as Marco Polo 8.223314. Here it resurfaces at upper bargain price.

Khachaturian, like many another composer, major and lesser, in Soviet Russia, turned his hand to the cinema and did so pretty extensively. This was a great leveller, a ready source of income and a means of reaching out to mass audiences across the Union. The pity is that we see so few of those films. If we think at all about them we much more readily accept seeing them written off as the work of political hacks. The composer’s first effort – of eighteen - was the film Pepo written for the Armenian Film Board a few years before his First Symphony (1934). His last film dated from 1960.

Here are suites assembled from the music for two of Khachaturian’s cinema scores. They are played for all they are worth. Adherents of this composer and of twentieth century music of the USSR will want to hear how he fared in dealing with the silver screen.

The Battle of Stalingrad original score ran to some two hours. The titles give us some impression of what is featured in this suite: I. A City on the Volga - II. The Invasion; IIIa. Stalingrad in Flames; IIIb. The Enemy is doomed; IV. For our Motherland; To the Attack! - Eternal Glory to the Heroes; V. To Victory - VI. There is a Cliff on the Volga. Much of this is urgent and not specially subtle – then again this is not meant to be about subtlety. The music often has a furious seething energy typical of the militaristic bravado found in the music for the Roman legionaries in Spartacus. We also hear little half-echoes of The Great Gate of Kiev. There are some glowing interludes such as that to be found in the almost Bridge-like battlefield bleakness of tr. 3 and at the close of tr. 4 (Eternal Glory to the Heroes). There are also moments that seem to evoke the composer’s great ballets – especially Spartacus. The cheery brassy march that is To Victory is noticeably purged of the ferocity to be found in the turbulent flag-waving first movement. This could almost be a march by Arthur Bliss. There’s a brass band version of the suite on Lawo which Nick Barnard did not think much of.

Both Chandos and Capriccio have done extensive series of the film music of Shostakovich. No such thorough efforts have gone in Khachaturian’s direction. There has been this single disc from Naxos and some film suites from ASV. Indeed fifteen minutes of Loris Tjeknavorian’s take on The Battle of Stalingrad was issued on Alto. It was originally issued with the Second Symphony.

If the Stalingrad score’s gaudy virtues are embraced, often at the expense of the more understated and nuanced, Othello from 1955 is much more multi-faceted. This is as befits a presumably fairly classy Shakespeare film in a translation made by Boris Pasternak – he of Doctor Zhivago fame. The Prologue and Intermezzo is especially touching with a memorable tolling solo violin which returns in the finale. There’s also some extremely inventive writing in a mode recalling Prokofiev who had died two years before this film. The Desdemona Arioso is a swellingly emotional vocalise for soprano with orchestra with more than few links with the famous Adagio from Spartacus. The little Venice Nocturne (tr.4) is a lovely miniature, showing as does much of this score, that Khachaturian is much more than a peddler of crushingly loud music. The grey psychological aspects of Nocturnal Murder make way for the intensity of Othello’s Despair. The urgently rushing A Fit of Jealousy will have you thinking of the ruthlessly athletic music for Crassus in Spartacus. If Khachaturian indulges in a Hollywood-style choir in the Finale – well, why not, and it is by no means cheesy.

The recording is extremely good despite its 25 year vintage. The notes by the conductor are helpful in placing the score and the films from which this music is drawn.

I hope that at some time, in a world where there are seemingly hundreds of film channels, we will get to see these films.

There you have it: specialist territory maybe but two very welcome substantial suites from the world of Khachaturian’s film music.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

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.

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

KHACHATURIAN, A.I.: Gayane Suites Nos. 1-3

This music is far removed from the style of Khachaturian’s memorable ballets Spartacus (1954) and Gayaneh (1942), being more complex and profound, so the reader should not endeavor to make comparisons with the familiar Khachaturian. The Russian composer came to writing his big compositions late in his career and decided to embrace the modernism then in fashion. Khachaturian happened to be a contemporary of Prokofiev (1891-1953) and Stravinsky (1882-1971), but where Prokofiev tended to dwell more on the romantic, Khachaturian leans to Stravinsky’s exploratory and robust form of composition.

The Second Symphony is Khachaturian’s biggest and most sophisticated work with its thematic material well hidden on a first listening. There are twists and turns to the score that are powerful and aggressive. This can be explained by the fact that the material was composed during the Second World War and Hitler’s attempt to take Moscow. Could the writing be a lament for the emotional turmoil the Russian citizens were going through? To give this symphony a title, ‘The Bell’ seems to be an error as its appearance is easily missed.

A myriad of textures and colors are evident in the symphony and its opening passages swirl around a moody gloom. Later, contrast is created by explosive fireworks that bring the full forces of the orchestra to swamp the imagination. This music could not have been easy for either the orchestra or conductor to master since each orchestral section seems to play the staves in isolation from its neighboring section. It is telling that the recording took five days to complete, clearly a vast investment of time and expense.

Far more in tune to the ear is the Lermontov Suite, which had its beginnings in earlier pieces brought together for this suite. Its name comes from a play about the life of playwright and poet Lermontov, one of the greatest Russian authors. Much of the suite, in addition to a waltz, is rhythmic and in ¾ time. The Mazurka is pleasant and particularly engaging but even some of the bright melody lines have darker moments. Perhaps Toye’s Haunted Ballroom meets Bernstein, and as with the symphony a powerful Andante, ‘On the death of the Poet’ brings weight to the suite.

The four-page booklet could have been better provided with larger type and given eight pages, yet its content provides all that the listener needs. Richard Whitehouse does a sterling job in his description of the Second Symphony, finding fitting adjectives to help us understand the construction of the composition. Naxos has to be congratulated for supporting this difficult work in another worthwhile recording to rival versions by ASV, Chandos, and Decca.

– MusicWeb International (Raymond J Walker)

Galway plays the Violin Concerto with a degree of imaginative flair and technical ease that one almost believes the music was conceived with the flute in mind.

Khachaturian's Flute Concerto was transcribed by Jean-Pierre Rampal from the Violin Concerto with the composer's blessing, and he has already made an excellent recording of it which is available on Erato's mid-price Presence label (EPRI5527,11/84). Coupled with a no-less-enjoyable version of the lbert Flute Concerto it has the benefit of a strikingly fine 1970 analogue recording. Galway has prepared his own edition of the solo part "which goes even further in its attempts to adapt the solo line to the characteristics of the flute". He also plays the work with that degree of imaginative flair and technical ease that he has previously applied to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Cesar Franck's Violin Sonata, which makes one almost believe the music was conceived with the flute in mind. He is particularly appealing in the dreamy and languorous melodies of Khachaturian's Andante; but also in the unforgettable second subject of the first movement (Khachaturian wrote some marvellous tunes in this work) Galway's sweet, yet never sugary timbre gives the melody a radiant lyrical colouring. The flute for all its bravura can't match the violin in the finale, but overall the piece is very enjoyable in its new dress.

Instead of another concerto Galway opts to arrange three Khachaturian lollipops as encores, and again the combination of lyrical ardour (in the famous Adagio) and sparkling, easy virtuosity (in the Sabre Dance, here elegant rather than noisy) is very persuasive. The digital recording, made in Watford Town Hall, is spacious but the resonance brings a slight lack of refinement in tuttis—the big fortissimo climaxes in the centre and towards the end of the concerto's slow movement are much too fierce, and this applies to the chrome cassette as well as the LP. They are in fact very closely matched, though the level of tape transfer is not especially high.

-- Gramophone [2/1986]