MUSIC REVIEW: TRIO NAREG OFFERS ARMENIAN RARITIES
By Richard S. Ginell, Special to the Times
Calendar Live
LA Times, CA
May 25 2007
The new group, which takes its name from a mystic poet, makes an
impressive debut in the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series
A new piano trio has come onto the scene, one that definitely has an
identity of its own.
Named after the 10th century Armenian mystic poet St. Gregory of
Nareg, Trio Nareg aims to mix Armenian repertoire with European
classics, not unlike the Dilijan Chamber Music Concert Series
downtown. Appropriately, the trio made its debut Wednesday night in
Burbank’s Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America –
another distinctly different locale for the Da Camera Society of
Mount St. Mary’s College’s Chamber Music in Historic Sites series.
Two of the musicians are noted veterans – pianist Armen Guzelimian
and violinist Ani Kavafian – while cellist Ani Kalayjian represents
a young, up-and-coming generation. On Wednesday, the balance of
the instruments tended to strongly favor the piano and the violin,
but this cannot be attributed solely to star power. For one thing,
Guzelimian was manning an aircraft carrier of a piano, a 97-key
Bosendorfer Imperial with the lid fully open.
Yet already, one could hear a well-developed sense of give-and-take
in Haydn’s brief Trio in A, Hob. XV:9, with Guzelimian offering a
particularly sharp, incisive presence (the Bosendorfer can serve
classical-period music surprisingly well). The Mendelssohn Trio in
C minor was a little rough in patches – especially the difficult,
quicksilver scherzo – but the performance had life and impressive
weight.
Of greatest interest were the rarities from Armenia. Arno Babadjanian’s
Piano Trio turned out to be another powerful, unabashedly Romantic
composition from this composer – a little easier on the Rachmaninoff
sauce this time, highlighted by the juicy, gorgeous melody lines for
the strings in the second movement before a boisterous folk-flavored
finale.
Tigran Mansurian’s meditations and modernisms are more fashionable
these days; his style is a good fit for the sleek sound of the ECM
label, which has released a lot of his music. Yet the most striking
thing about his Five Bagatelles – with its episodes of spare trance
music and vehement mini-dances – is its symmetry, the arch-like shapes
of each of the central three pieces and the work as a whole.
Trio Nareg also played a lighthearted Edward Aprahamian scherzo that
was loaded with tunes of local color.
Everything sounded clear, if rather dry, in the ballroom-like Nazareth
and Sima Kalaydjian Hall, which is very well-insulated from the noise
of its next-door neighbor, Interstate 5.