Search - Aram Khachaturian, Jean Sibelius, Emmanuel Krivine :: Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos

Sibelius & Khatchaturian, by Khachatryan: Superb Music

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 10/05/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"We all know that fields of gravity cross and criss-cross our local solar system as planets spin in their orbits around our sun. We also may know of the immense amount of space debris that flurries this way and that, here and there and seemingly everywhere. When you put the two realities together, you may feel you are walking down a historic but neglected city street where the character of the neighborhood has fallen prey to transience and forgetfulness and poverty. We peer dimly into an unglorious human future for our civilization that promises only to be punctuated with inevitable crisis as one brute hand of circumstance or the other hammers in fits against the nearest wall of the human heart. If you find yourself noticing the dimming lights of humanism in our current era, then by all means you should get this CD and listen to it repeatedly before you make any major decisions.



Like a rising star against the velvet horizon edging an otherwise vaulted and gloomy night sky, the fiddler here is a new talent named Sergey Khachatryan. After listening to this disc, I am very pleased to report that he is indeed the genuine article. His energy and innocence demonstrate how much he still loves music. Unlike some artists of his generation, ... he is barely out of his late teens, ... the sheer physicality of his playing somehow demonstrates how profoundly one with his instrument a great artist may become. Sergey has apparent complete mastery of all that his fiddle may offer .... as if he were that magic Rumpelstiltskin of fairy tale who could spin gold from straw. This Sergey can also spin music shining with silver, platinum, and that rarest of metals ....joi de vivre. His fiddle is a Guarnerius on loan from some German fans, and he uses it to incredible and glorious effect. You are no doubt vulnerable to this spell to the extent that you may have been feeling like a princess locked in a high tower, away from the air and the sun and the green beauty of the fields. You may start to think that the violin is surely the King of Instruments.



Though Sergey is undoubtedly a representative of the true Russian school of violin playing, he represents an uncommon amalgam of talent with heritage. His string tone has a true emotional center, glowing with the sort of hot penetrating fire we have previously come to know and love in many Russian string players. Sergey's hot sound does not suffer any detriment from being compared with, say, David Oistrakh himself. But Sergey also has something else, something more. He has a kind of celestial luminosity and a Russian elegance (think, Leonid Kogan?) that transform and complete his string tone. The result is that his upper registers penetrate directly to the heart, without requiring any added noise or over-acting. At fast or slow tempos, his musical sound breathes or hovers or dances. Phrased alchemy purges all the base metals and leaves only the purest and most gleaming tonal treasure behind. This sort of fiddle playing is more ballet than athletics or tumbling.



It is no surprise to read that Kachatryan won the Helsinki Sibelius prize, several years back when he was only fifteen years old. Here on this CD he surely recreates, or perhaps even surpasses, that pinnacle. Sergey puts his considerable gifts completely at the disposal of the composer. He conjures both the composer as ordinary human being and as a kind of Finnish mystic. This CD is the first one in a very long time that I thought could rub shoulders with the legendary Jascha Heifitz recording, and hold a decent musical conversation with that great master as an equal. If anything, Khachatryan surpasses Heifitz in depth and breadth of deep humanity. Sergey has an uncanny yet musical heart as big as the famed Finnish forests.



To fill out the remainder of the disc, we are treated to Armenian composer Aram Khatchaturian's only violin concerto. On most fiddles, with most players, this concerto turns into an over-heated folk-festival of garish colors and heavy-handed dramatic pointing for both the solo violin and the rest of the orchestra. It is too easy for this concerto to go nowhere.



Applying himself, Sergey returns this concerto safely and brilliantly to the musical center. He finds narrative where other fiddlers find only repetition. He never, ever has to be loud to be convincing. The orientalized musical noodling in the slow movement that wears on your nerves with so many other fiddlers, becomes ever so mysteriously whispered. You find yourself hearing the authentic yet exotic voice of that famous story-teller, Sheherazade herself. There is perfume and romance, but communicatively embodied. I don't think I have ever before wanted to repeat the slow movement. But Sergey made me hear the Armenian soul of this concerto.



Well I have been so taken with the fiddler that I have hardly mentioned the conductor and the orchestra. They deserve high praise, too. The Sinfonia Varsovia is a wonderful band that can sound perfect for Mozart, but too small for Beethoven. Let loose upon the late Romantic breadth of each of these concertos, they finally sound perfectly fine for both. Emmanuel Krivine keeps tempos moving, but he never sounds superficial or rushed. He never seems to be embarrassed by the music's large gesture or the massed heft of the orchestra. He is content to be background for the soloist without lapsing in attention. The woodwinds are particularly distinguished. Thus, the wonder of this young fiddler is recognized and encouraged and fully supported by all involved. You feel as if everyone in Sinfonia Varsovia was paying just as much attention to their music, as was Sergey to his own. You feel that Krivine values both concertos as music of symphonic scope and power. In short, this CD can be very highly recommended on all counts. It is, indeed, a five star labor of great love."

STAR FROM THE EAST

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 07/24/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It would be interesting to try a minor experiment with this record. Play some extract from it - almost any part would do - to some experienced musicians and ask them simply to picture the soloist. If the image of a small and slightly-built teenager comes to anyone's mind I shall be very surprised indeed. In his contribution to the liner note Sergey Khachatryan notes that his next project is to be Shostakovich. It was in Shostakovich that I heard him two weeks ago with the BBC Philharmonic, and mightily impressed I was. What Khachatryan's playing has is quality - quality in the tone, quality in the phrasing, quality in the rhythm, and I need hardly say total and perfect quality in the intonation.



This record was made in July 2003. It was time to get a cd version of the Sibelius anyhow to supplement my LP account of the first recording of the work, done in 1935 but sounding surprisingly well still, by Heifetz and Beecham, and this particular soloist struck me as a good bet. So it has turned out. For me, the Sibelius concerto sometimes works and sometimes not. In his thoughtful book on the composer Robert Layton hints that its style is not completely consistent, and I have heard many performances that leave me feeling the same way. From the symphonies it would be hard to imagine Sibelius as a concerto writer, not a difficulty one would experience in listening to Mozart Beethoven or Brahms as symphonists. Nothing in the finales of the Sibelius symphonies is remotely suggestive of concerto style for one thing. When it comes to the bit, Sibelius turns out a finale in something at least resembling the normal idiom of such, a slow movement with more 19th century lyricism than is customary from him, and a first movement that is a strange mixture of that kind of lyricism and a remote cold idiom that reminds me that the fourth symphony was not far in the future. This is presumably what left Mr Layton less than convinced, but the right artists can overcome the difficulty as I have always felt Heifetz and Beecham do triumphantly. And now here is Khachatryan, with the Sinfonia Varsovia under Emmanuel Krivine, pulling off the trick again. Speeds in the outer movements are a little slower, but speed is not the issue. The issue is -- is this work really coherent? If it can be, it must be.



Khachaturian, for me, is not really a heavyweight composer. He is not quite so relentlessly traditional in idiom as Myaskovsky, but nothing here and not much elsewhere in his work can surely have given much difficulty to Zhdanov. Naturally the Armenian elements in his music have a special significance for the soloist, and even from my own standpoint the slow movement, a very long one, rises to real eloquence particularly near the end. The soloist shows the same mastery as in the Sibelius, although I fancy his task was a little easier, and the work is a thoroughly welcome addition to my collection.



In general I was impressed by the Sinfonia Varsovia, particularly by some vivid woodwind work in the first movement of the Sibelius. The recording is good in general too, if just a touch rowdy in some of the bigger tuttis, but we have got used to such a high standard these days that we can now afford to be very particular indeed. I feel privileged to have heard an emerging superstar so early in his career. If he is as mature and accomplished as this now, what is he going to develop into? I read his plans with interest in the liner note. These are fairly conservative, as I suppose we might expect at this stage, and I might even be persuaded to listen to the Tchaikovsky concerto if I get the chance to hear it from Khachatryan."

The best

transcend | New York city | 06/04/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"By no means whimsically or freshly swayed by the beauty of the music itself, and after having listened to various interpretations including those of patent greats, it is clear to me that this work of Khachatryan's is the most measured, exact, and mellifluous of all. There is simply so much symmetry, meter in his notes. Yet, there is also fire, and so much more ever suggested. The only critique I can think of is that I WISH I could hear it live. This rendition belongs in the place where music meets itself -- realizing it sometimes forgets where it comes from: the genius of 2, and not one!



As for Khachatryan on Kchaturian, the oddysey continued.



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