AN EXOTIC EVENING FULL OF GEMS
By Ken Winters

The Globe and Mail (Canada)
May 28, 2007 Monday

Amici
Isabel Bayrakdarian, soprano
Serouj Kradjian, pianist, arranger
At Glenn Gould Studio
In Toronto, Friday night

Amici – Friends – ended their season Friday night with a stunning
concert of Armenian, Spanish and Spanish-influenced vocal and
instrumental music in an arresting balance.

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and her
pianist-composer-arranger-accompanist husband Serouj Kradjian were
together in the spotlight. Core Amici members clarinetist (and artistic
director) Joaquin Valdepenas and cellist David Hetherington were there
in crucial supporting roles, as was violinist Benjamin Bowman. And
for the last three numbers the cello section was quadrupled, as if by
visiting Valkyries, when Winona Zelenka, Roberta Janzen and Rachel
Mercer joined Hetherington and the others for lush accompaniments
of songs by the Argentinian Carlos Guastavino, the Spaniard Xavier
Montsalvatge and the Brazilian Jayme Ovalle.

The highlight of the richly exotic program, however, both in freshness
and in worth, was a set of seven Armenian folk songs collected
by Reverend Gomidas and arranged by Kradjian for soprano, piano,
violin, clarinet and cello. The songs were having their Canadian
premiere. Kradjian’s arrangements were classy and strikingly effective,
and Bayrakdarian’s singing of them was ravishing.

On a single hearing I have no hesitation in asserting that this set
of songs, in these arrangements, is as vivid and enticing as the
famous Auvergne folk song arrangements of Joseph Canteloube. As for
Bayrakdarian’s performance, it had an authority reminiscent of the
legendary Madeleine Grey’s in the Auvergne songs or of the fabled
Conchita Supervia’s in Manuel de Falla’s Seven Spanish Folksongs. I
think the proper term is ownership: Bayrakdarian sings these songs
as if she owns them. Her voice takes on a fullness and a subtle
expressive flexibility it does not always bring to the classics,
beautifully and intelligently though she sings these, too.

Another handsome set of songs that we too seldom hear – Seven Classic
Spanish Songs, by Fernando Obradors – came after intermission. These
were more in the formal recital mode, with just Bayrakdarian and
Kradjian performing. The tough and touching El Vito is the third song,
but every one is a gem and the team performed all of them superbly.

Two instrumental trios bookended the two song sets. The Armenian-born
Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian’s Trio for clarinet, violin and cello
opened the concert, and the Armenian composer Arno Babadjanian’s Trio
for violin, cello and piano followed the Obradors.

The Khachaturian had that composer’s typical difficulty in achieving
real structural movement in his bass-line, but there was much
interesting detail in the clarinet and violin writing, and in the
piano, too, when it wasn’t just striking and sustaining those long-held
pedal points. Valdepenas, Bowman and Kradjian played the work superbly
and shone especially in the lively rhythms of the finale.

The Babadjanian Trio was the other surprise of the evening: a major
work for the classic piano trio which seems not yet to have found
its niche in the repertoire, though it dates from 1952. Yes, it has
echoes of Rachmaninoff in its discourse and even more of Cesar Franck
in its chromatic enharmony; but only the best of both other composers,
and much of its own, distinctive and vigorous. Bowman, Hetherington
and Kradjian played it magnificently, with Bowman particularly fine
in the exquisite opening of the Andante, and all three absolutely on
their mettle in the five-to-the-bar finale. This was a real discovery.

After it came the three songs with the Valkyrie reinforcements
mentioned earlier, and with Bayrakdarian again in her glory. And then,
the uproar of applause, and the encores. What a concert.