Armenian composers

[Roy Bland]

https://chitchyan.am/chitchyans-music/

[Roy Bland]

[Roy Bland]

https://simonian.nl/music/

[Roy Bland]

Armenian? organ music

[Roy Bland]

[San Antone]

Avet Terterian (1929-1994) : String Quartet No. 2 (1991)
Moscow Ensemble of Contemporary Music, Alexei Vinogradov

Alfred Roubenovich "Avet" Terterian (also Terteryan) was an Armenian composer, awarded the Konrad Adenauer Prize. Terterian composed eight (completed) symphonies, several of which are recorded, an opera and several chamber works.

Terterian was a friend and colleague of Giya Kancheli, Konstantin Orbelyan, and Tigran Mansurian. Dmitri Shostakovich praised Terterian as "very talented" and "with great future" in one of his letters, published by his friend Isaak Glikman, having heard a recording of Terterian's works at Armenia's "House of Composers" summer resort in Dilijan, Armenia. (wikipedia)

[San Antone]

WITNESS | Silent Cranes
Kronos Quartet and Mary Kouyoumdjian

David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Paul Wiancko, cello

I. slave to your voice - 00:00
II. you did not answer - 09:18
III. [with blood-soaked feathers] - 15:01
IV. you flew away - 26:04

Silent Cranes is inspired by the Armenian folk song "Groung (Crane)" in which the singer calls out to the migratory bird, begging for word from their homeland, only to have the crane respond with silence and fly away. The first, second, and fourth movement titles quote directly from the folk song lyrics. Those who were lost during the genocide are cranes in their own way, unable to speak of the horrors that happened, and it is the responsibility of the living to give them a voice.

The prerecorded backing track includes testimonies by genocide survivors, recordings from the genocide era of Armenian folk songs, and a poem from investigative journalist David Barsamian in response to the question 'Why is it important to talk about the Armenian Genocide 100 years later?'

Silent Cranes is dedicated to those lost and to those living who can promote change.

A long while back I read Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian which is a personal memoir, a re-telling, of what was a quintessential American baby boom childhood, but at the center which lay the dark specter of a trauma his forebears had experienced -- the Ottoman Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915. Very strongly moving book.

[Roy Bland]