Music opens Armenian soul, history

Dilijan chamber group plays heartfelt selections

Los Angeles Daily News
4/09/2006

By Alex Dobuzinskis, Staff writer

GLENDALE – Performing the classics to open a window into the Armenian
soul, the directors of the fledgling Dilijan chamber music series have
chosen composers who offer turbulent life stories.

They include an Armenian priest and composer who ended up in an insane
asylum after being deported by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, and a
Russian-trained composer of Armenian descent who was sanctioned by the
Soviet “music police” for creating pieces deemed too abstract.

The Dilijan series has also sought to present the work of emerging
composers, especially those of Armenian descent.

After Armenia’s long history of being ruled by the Ottoman Empire and
then the Soviet Union, the nation’s composers are finally coming into
their own, said Vatsche Barsoumian, a Glendale-based creator of the
Dilijan series. And as Armenian composers create new music, the series
is bringing their work to Southern California audiences.

“Now that (Armenia is) relatively independent,” Barsoumian said, “we are
trying to find out and experiment with sound that is closest to our
heart and experiences as Armenians, without any impediments.”

Dilijan, in its inaugural season, brings together small groups of
musicians to play classical music, using the Colborn School of Music in
downtown Los Angeles as a venue and operating out of the Glendale office
of the nonprofit Lark Musical Society.

The series is not dedicated only to compositions by Armenians. It has
already featured the work of classical music heavyweights Josef Haydn,
Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms.

And many of the 26 professional musicians involved in the project are
also not of Armenian descent. Phil O’Connor, 33, who plays clarinet and
saxophone, said he has enjoyed being part of the series.

“In the chamber music setting, because it’s less people involved, you
have more ability for everyone to interject their opinion and … you
can develop a group interpretation much more readily than you would in a
symphony,” O’Connor said.

Artistic director Movses Pogossian, 39, of Montrose is a violinist who
made his American debut in 1990 as a soloist with the Boston Pops.

A native of Armenia who taught music at universities in Pittsburgh,
Bowling Green and Detroit, he is impressed by Los Angeles musicians who
are just as comfortable playing at a movie studio as a symphony hall.

“Musically it’s the busiest city in America,” Pogossian said. “I think
it has the greatest number of great musicians in the country.”

On April 21, in a show called “Armenian Genocide Commemoration,”
Pogossian and five other musicians will perform the last installment of
the Dilijan series. The show comes a few days before the date when
Armenians mark the 1915 deportations and killings in the Ottoman Empire
that claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

One of the pieces chosen for the evening is a work by the Armenian
priest and composer Komitas. He was deported by the Ottoman Turks in
1915 and narrowly escaped death, but the experience put him in an insane
asylum and he died a few years later.

The April 21 show will also feature work by the living Armenian composer
Tigran Mansurian, and the late French composer Olivier Messiaen’s
“Quartet for the End of Time,” which was written in a German prison camp
during World War II.

“Instead of bringing out the dark and tragic in the piece, basically
Messiaen is singing the glory to God and it’s an incredibly positive and
life-affirming piece,” Pogossian said.

On Oct. 20, the series presented a unique show called “Condemned by
Stalin,” highlighting three Soviet composers who fell out of favor with
dictator Joseph Stalin. They include Aram Khatchaturian, a
Russian-trained composer of Armenian descent.

“They thought that he was trying to do some advanced modernistic
styles,” Barsoumian said.

The other two composers were Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.

“Their music was going to be checked by people who acted like policemen,
music policemen,” Barsoumian said.

For more information on the Dilijan chamber music series, go to

Contact: alex.dobuzinskis@dailynews.com, (818) 546-3304

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress