Posted on Tue, Dec. 8, 2009
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Entrancing Armenian works
Sunday’s concert was a rare chance to hear this rich ethnic music.

By David Patrick Stearns
Inquirer Classical Music Critic

Where does this music come from? Why is it so hypnotic? Who are these
people around me?

Such questions no doubt arose in the minds of seasoned Philadelphia
Chamber Music Society patrons during Sunday’s concert, "Hayren," which
broke with convention not in the name of innovation but to claim an
elemental sense of identity – Armenian, specifically – with a musical
richness that could entrance ears of any ethnicity.

The concert was headed by classical violist Kim Kashkashian, who has
been exploring her Armenian roots in recent years and breaking with
typical formats. Sunday, she arrived with a battery of percussion
played by Robyn Schulkowsky and a pianist/vocalist who happened to be
celebrated composer Tigran Mansurian.

Heralded by acclaimed ECM discs (the latest is Neharót), the concert
packed Settlement Music School in a program repeated that night at New
York’s Le Poisson Rouge. The local Armenian community was in evidence:
Mansurian, 70, is to Armenia what Aaron Copland is to America. The
other composer was the idolized Vartabed Komitas (1869-1935), who gave
Armenia a voice.

Komitas’ collection of folk songs and Mansurian’s Three Taghs were
reverse negatives of each other – Komitas harmonically dense and
feverish, weighted more toward accompaniment than the voice, Mansurian
reflecting a Slavonic church-music influence with teeming though fluid
vocal lines and spare accompaniment. They share a periphery full of
tangy Middle Eastern microtones that, to Western ears, make the music
go mildly haywire. One moment you’re lulled; the next, you’re
wide-eyed and arrested.

More sophisticated Mansurian works such as Lied, Gebilde und
Wandschirm had an expanded, almost Debussian harmonic palette, only
spikier. The percussion enveloped the ears with gongs played with soft
sticks and xylophones with bows creating sound shapes similar to those
heard in George Crumb’s recent folk-song settings.

A take-what-you-can-get attitude, however, was needed: Such programs
aren’t often heard in these parts. However, Mansurian’s singing was
puzzling. Is his thin, semi-audible voice somehow appropriate to this
music? He captures the bent notes and microtonal flourishes
authentically. But recordings made by Komitas – easily found on the
Internet – bristle with emotional aches and pains, fused with a
soaring pride in who and what he was. Yet, as unflattering as the
comparison is, I wouldn’t have found Komitas’ remarkable voice were it
not for Mansurian.

Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.