ARMENIAN VIOLINIST, 21, DAZZLES CROWD IN S.F.
By Richard Scheinin

San Jose Mercury News, USA
March 14 2006

A kid named Khachatryan played music by Khachaturian in San Francisco
on Sunday. Sergey Khachatryan, a 21-year-old violinist from Armenia,
was making his local debut; he played like a poet, with a subtle and
commanding mix of confidence, sensitivity and craft.

This charismatic newcomer was performing with the venerable London
Philharmonic Orchestra, which made the event extra-special. The entire
program at Davies Symphony Hall was defined by the unexpected.

Scheduled conductor Kurt Masur, who suffered heart palpitations in
Dublin, Ireland, a few days earlier, sent along a protege as his
substitute: Brazilian conductor Roberto Minczuk stepped up and did a
superb job with Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony
No. 1.

So the night, part of the San Francisco Symphony’s Great Performers
Series, offered its audience a double discovery: new soloist, new
conductor. But the kid, Khachatryan — he was the show.

The concerto by Khachaturian, a father of Armenian “nationalist”
music in the last century, is spiced with folkloric rhythms, themes and
inflections. It also is sensuous, a little bit schmaltzy, and sheerly,
at times eerily, beautiful. From the opening bars, the orchestra
sounded exceptionally luminous — those strings!

And then came the soloist: crisp attack, warm singing tone, spot-on
intonation. He is slender, with a thatch of curly black hair, and he
isn’t a showman; he is about clarity and control and expression.

His cadenza in the first movement was cleanly delivered — all those
keening, up-sliding double-stops — and emotionally full-blooded,
without knocking you on the head. As it ended, with the orchestra
sliding back in behind Khachatryan, a comfortable “duet” was going
on between the soloist and his famous accompanists from London.

The orchestra sounded great (not a big surprise): sparkling clarinet
and winds; bounding cellos; and clarity all around, down to each
ping of the harp. Minczuk, whose gestures are flowing and emphatic,
seemed to have established a balance that allowed his players to
speak as individuals and as a collective.

There were ghostly tremulous effects in the low strings as the slow,
lyrical second movement began. Here, Khachatryan showed a sort of
late-night, bluesy restraint, clarifying the schmaltz. And as the
third movement began, with a blast of brass, and then more bounding
strings — they sounded like a giant mandolin — again he held himself
in check, building tension.

He pulled earthy sustained notes from his low strings, then soared
way up high, before flying back downward, decelerating and shifting
into a new tempo, dovetailing expertly with the orchestra as he went
on to gobble up all the notes of the final racing sequences.

The audience brought him back for several bows and, finally,
Khachatryan offered an encore. It was nothing showy or fast; just the
opposite, in fact: the Adagio from Bach’s Sonata No. 3 in C major
for Solo Violin, which unfolded sweetly, with beautiful control of
the instrument (Khachatryan plays the “Huggins” Stradivarius, built
in 1708).

The violinist has been taken under Masur’s wing. He also has performed
with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in
Amsterdam and, based on Sunday’s evidence, is a winner.

He returns soon, on March 29, for a recital at the Florence Gould
Theater of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco ().

Poor Mahler. He played second fiddle to the young violinist on
Sunday. His Symphony No. 1 in D major, known as the “Titan,” was
given a strong performance, with all its swooping and swooning bows
to the natural world, its raspy horns, waltzing interludes and great
brass anthems.

It wasn’t as refined and lovingly nuanced as the Mahler performances
we’ve been hearing from the San Francisco Symphony and conductor
Michael Tilson Thomas the past few years. The peeping pastoral sounds
that dot the first movement weren’t always exactly in place; there was
some ragged brass playing in the third movement, where the orchestra
momentarily lost its bearings amid klezmer-ish and other dance rhythms.

But the fourth movement was high impact — literally. The orchestra
summoned entire storm systems of sound: crashing cymbals, tolling
timpani, screeching strings and great brass pronouncements, with all
eight horn players on their feet as Heaven’s Gates, figuratively,
opened.

Even so, Khachatryan was the show.

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