Yulia Ayrapetyan - Secrets of Armenia - Piano Works - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Komitas was a priest, a musician and a pioneer of ethnomusicology, considered to be the founder of the Armenian national school of music. A significant part of his life was taken up with travel to remote villages, collecting thousands of traditional songs. These range from simple melodies and poetic sketches of Armenian landscapes, to dramatic lyrics expressing mournful tragedy. Komitas was enthralled by the way 'a peasant learns this art in nature's embrace, with nature as his infallible school.' Heard here in world première recordings, these idiomatic arrangements by Villy Sargsyan importantly preserve the composer's modal-intonational system

Tigran Chukhajian is highly significant in the history of Armenian music he was the first composer to combine Western and Eastern cultures, and was referred to as the 'Armenian Verdi' amongst his contemporaries. Persecution under the repressive Ottoman Turkish regime led to his music being suppressed, but these piano works are a sophisticated testament to Chukhajian's Romantic inclinations, absorbing the influences of Chopin and Liszt, and enriching them with Oriental nuances and descriptive themes. Mikael Ayrapetyan is a pianist, composer and producer. He is also the founder and artistic director of the music project Secrets of Armenia, which aims to increase international awareness of Armenian classical music, and actively organizes concerts featuring Armenian music in venues around the world, for which he is producer, artistic director and pianist. Born in 1984 in Yerevan, Armenia, he studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, and continues to uphold the performing traditions of the Russian piano school, of which Konstantin Igumnov, Samuel Feinberg and Lev Oborin are luminaries. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works by Armenian composers. Album Tracks 1. Impromptu in B Flat minor 'Cascade de Couz' 2. Dance Caractéristique in a Minor 'L'orientale' 3. Grande Valse Fantastique in a Minor 'Illusions' 4. Tarantelle in B Flat minor 5. Caprice in E minor 'La Lyre Orientale' 6. Mazurka de Salon 'Mignon' 7. Gavotte de Plus in E Flat Major 8. Polka in F Major 'La Gaité' 9. Proti Polka in G Major 10. Funeral March in D minor 11. Fantaisie Orientale No. 1 in a Minor 'Sur Des Motifs Turcs' 12. Fantaisie Orientale No. 2 in a Minor 'Sur Des Motifs Turcs'

Haïg Sarikouyoumdjian, young master of the duduk oboe (so emblematic and evocative of the Armenian people), favors a personal approach both sober and moving, between improvisations and traditional repertoire -refined aesthetic also at play in his own musical instruments making. Haig Sarikouyoumdjian studied the duduk in Armenia with different teachers, and mastered duduk technique and it's multiple nuances of timbre, along with all the subtleties of traditional repertoire (perfecting intonation, rhythmic ambiguities, ornamentation, modal development). At the same time, he has collaborated on different projects directed by Jordi Savall like 'Istanbul', Mare Nostrum, and others. His research on duduk timbre began to draw him more and more towards instrument making. He learned how to make his own reeds with Ashot Martirosyan, and studied wood turning and tuning in the Myerrecorders studio workshop with Ernst Meyer and his two sons (renowned Baroque recorder manufacturers).