MUSIC IS A FAMILY AFFAIR FOR ACCLAIMED VIOLINIST PERFORMING IN PRINCETON
by By Mark Mobley
The Star-Ledger
009/01/music_is_a_family_affair_for_a.html
Jan 8 2009
NJ
Sergey Khachatryan with Lusine Khachatryan. When: 8
p.m. Wednesday. Where: Matthews Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, 91
University Place, Princeton. How much: $35-$44. Call (609) 258-2787
or go to mccarter.org.
Listening to the debut CD Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan
recorded as a teenager, it seems he was born to play the instrument
extraordinarily well. But the critically acclaimed winner of two
major competitions, who at 23 has already appeared or been scheduled
with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, says he’s a fiddler
by default.
"It came very naturally because everyone in my family plays piano
besides me. My dad, my mom, my sister," he says by phone from his home
in Frankfurt. "My father always joked I was the most untalented one,
so that’s why he gave me the violin."
It proved to be a good choice for Khachatryan, who appears in recital
at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton on Wednesday with his pianist
sister Lusine. He is on an extremely steep rise that began with winning
the International Jean Sibelius competition in Helsinki in 2000 and
continued with finishing first at the Queen Elisabeth competition in
Brussels five years later. In recent seasons he’s performed with the
New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra,
as well as the leading ensembles of London, Amsterdam and Tokyo.
Khachatryan was born in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, in 1985. In 1993,
the family moved to Germany — where, he says, he found little support
from the musical establishment. "All the career I have now I built by
myself," he says. "I didn’t have a father who was a millionaire. All I
achieved I did through my playing." He acknowledges not every budding
soloist has to enter competitions, but "for me it was the only way
to get world recognition."
Winning the quadrennial Queen Elisabeth came with an important
perk. Each first-place finisher gets to play the 1708 "Huggins"
Stradivarius until the next champ is crowned. "This instrument (gave)
me so much possibility that I didn’t know exists," he says. What he
loves about its sound "is just warmness, how it carries in a big hall."
Tone color and volume are just two of the countless issues he has to
consider in rehearsal with his sister. "We feel very close as people,"
he says. "The same blood is inside of us. Of course we argue and have
had disagreements, but we both look at what is right for the music."
On Wednesday, they will play the only violin sonata by Shostakovich,
whose violin concerti Khachatryan recorded with the Orchestra National
de France and Kurt Masur. They will also perform the violinist’s
favorite Brahms sonata, the first. "Brahms is famous for being very
dramatic," Khachatryan says. "This is so different, really intimate."
The program opens with the second partita by J.S. Bach, a suite of
solo pieces that ends with one of the composer’s most challenging,
moving and heroic pieces, a chaconne. This set of variations is the
"To be or not to be" speech for violinists, a test of technical skill
and sustained musicality.
Khachatryan says his favorite composers may vary from season to season,
and his interpretations change from day to day, but he never strays
very far from Bach, whose complete solo violin works he is recording
over the next two years. "I have a special relationship with him,"
he says. "When I play his music I literally purify my soul. I forget
the real world and go to a different world, which is pure."