Gomidas songs |
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ISABEL BAYRAKDARIAN SINGS THE SONGS OF GOMIDAS ON A NEW NONESUCH CD TO BE RELEASED ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 The music of Armenia’s greatest composer, Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935), may well be unknown to even the most adventurous of veteran music lovers, but Nonesuch and Canadian-Armenian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian have joined forces with Bayrakdarian’s husband, pianist and musicologist Serouj Kradjian, to right the sins of omission against Gomidas, the Armenian monk, composer, musicologist, and scholar. Isabel Bayrakdarian: Gomidas Songs, to be released on September 23, offers the first authentic major-label recording of a variety of music by Gomidas in all its hauntingly melodic glory – from folk songs and love songs to prayers, songs for children, songs of nature, and solo dances for piano, all reconstructed and arranged by Kradjian, who also performs on the album. Filmmaker Atom Egoyan, a friend of Bayrakdarian and Kradjian, wrote a liner note for the CD, in which he identifies his favorite track, “Groong” (The Crane), which he used in his film Ararat: “Isabel’s voice…is such a gift. I found that the most moving moment in this collection was listening to “Groong” (The Crane), a song of longing and return. I had used this theme extensively in Ararat, yet found it completely different here, its colors and sublime cadences registering in a new and unexpected way. Isabel and Serouj had found a way of reinventing a song that I knew so well.” Kradjian’s reconstructions and arrangements, and the authentic performances by the Chamber Players of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Eduard Topchjan, give this music – new to most ears – the hauntingly beautiful and sometimes rollicking atmosphere on the disc. Veteran producer Wilhelm Hellweg and engineer Alfredo Lasheras Hakobian recorded this music with Bayrakdarian and the orchestra in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan. The evocative sound of the duduk, an Armenian wind instrument, lends a unique flavor to much of this music, and is played on several tracks by Gevorg Dabaghyan. The solo violin and clarinet are also often heard in these arrangements. Full texts and translations are included in the booklet. In his own illuminating note in Nonesuch’s lavishly produced CD booklet, Serouj Kradjian introduces the man and the musician known as Gomidas, who was orphaned very young and raised to become a monk. Given the name Gomidas and the honorific Vartabed when he took holy orders, he studied western music in Berlin and Paris, but his life’s work was the conservation of Armenian music. Kradjian refers to him as “Armenia’s Bach, Schubert and Bartók”: he composed immortal liturgical music for Armenia’s ancient Christian religious services, like Bach; he created melodious songs and instrumental music for its people, like Schubert; and he collected and notated the music of the culture, much as Bartók did a generation later. “Who was the musician Gomidas? He never composed an opera, symphony, oratorio, or concerto, but what he accomplished was greater. He purified Armenian music of all foreign influences and gave it back to its people, laying the foundations of a national music culture. This explains his rightful recognition as ‘father of Armenian classical music.’ One shudders to imagine what might have happened had Gomidas not begun his mission well before 1915. After the [Turkish] Genocide nothing survived: churches were destroyed, pilgrimages and all the ceremonies accompanying them came to an end, villagers clinging to their land and singing its praises were killed or deported. Nothing was left to compile or compare, let alone preserve for future generations. Gomidas came forward at the eleventh hour to redeem a vital characteristic of a 4000 year-old civilization that was eventually uprooted from its cradle.” Gomidas himself wrote: “It is difficult to make clear the uniqueness of Armenian folk music to foreigners, particularly to Europeans. We must gather our folk songs and folk dance-songs with great care and respect, for they portray an altogether different fervour, different sentiment, and different meaning from those of other Eastern nations.” And Atom Egoyan, like Bayrakdarian and Kradjian a child of the Armenian diaspora, writes: “The strength of any culture resides in this phenomenon – its ability to preserve, cherish, reinvent, and grow. This was the gift that Gomidas gave to his people, and this is the gift which Isabel has revealed and brought to the world. It’s a precious gift, and one that I’m deeply thankful for.” Isabel Bayrakdarian is best known as an operatic soprano in great demand all over the world. She and Serouj Kradjian live in Toronto with their young son, and sometimes all of them travel together to her faraway performances. At the Metropolitan Opera she’s been a “delicious” Susanna in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Zerlina in his Don Giovanni, and Pamina in The Magic Flute”; she actually made her 2002 company debut in a new opera by William Bolcom, A View from the Bridge, based on Arthur Miller’s play. Most recently she performed in Janacek’s folk-based opera The Cunning Little Vixen under Seiji Ozawa in Japan, and in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Canadian Opera Company. She has made numerous solo recordings for the CBC and Canada’s Analekta label, and won four consecutive JUNO awards, Canada’s equivalent of the Grammy. She was featured on the cover of Opera News in June 2005. Isabel Bayrakdarian’s Remembrance Concert Tour in October, with music by Gomidas, Ravel, Bartók, and other composers, and dedicated to all victims of genocide, has been generously underwritten by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (a division of the Zoryan Institute). Bayrakdarian will perform many selections from her Nonesuch Gomidas recording on this tour with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and its conductor Anne Manson. They open on October 4 in San Francisco, continuing to the Orange County PAC in Los Angeles, and then to Vancouver, Toronto, Boston and New York.
The Remembrance Concert TourIsabel Bayrakdarian, soprano; Serouj Kradjian, piano; Hampic Djabourian, duduk; Oct 4 San Francisco: San Francisco Performances, Herbst Theater |
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