Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)

[kyjo]

Speaking of Khachaturian's chamber music, North Star (Karlo) alerted me to this new release:



This will be a must-buy once it's released here in the US. I've never seen all of his chamber works under one roof like this.

Very cool! Thanks for the heads up, John. Found it on Spotify.

[Mirror Image]

Very cool! Thanks for the heads up, John. Found it on Spotify.

Yes, indeed. Let me know what you think of it whenever you get the chance.

[Mirror Image]

I rather enjoyed the Symphony No. 2 in E minor, 'The Bell' yesterday. I listened to it twice. Tjeknavorian's performance was also top-drawer. I believe that Tjeknavorian understands Khachaturian's music rather well. Of course, the Armenian Philharmonic play this music with the right amount of intensity and drive. I'm still waiting for a younger conductor to record a series on this composer. It would be awesome if Kirill Karabits would record more Khachaturian. So far, he's recorded excerpts from Gayane and Spartacus on the Onyx label (w/ the Bournemouth SO, which I believe was this conductor's debut recording with them if I'm not mistaken).

[Christo]

The whole ballet is surely one of the catchiest works I've ever heard, and I've heard many! Anyone who loves this composer should hear this work in its entirely, it's absolutely fantastic. There is a movement called Love Duet or Love Scene if my memory serves. What a most ardent and romantic tune!! It will be on your head for some days.

+1

[Mirror Image]

Cross-posted from the 'Listening' thread -

First-Listen Fridays -

Gayane



WOW!!! WOW!!! I'm just speechless...

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Have been listening Rampal's Flute Concerto for years. I prefer the flute version of concerto to the original violin concerto, and I like the Rampal set more than the recordings by Pahud, Galway, etc. The orchestra led by Jean Martinon offers a heated performance. It seems to me that the melody sounds more lively, dancing and flowing with flute than violin. Just my feeling though.

[Mirror Image]

Have been listening Rampal's Flute Concerto for years. I prefer the flute version of concerto to the original violin concerto, and I like the Rampal set more than the recordings by Pahud, Galway, etc. The orchestra led by Jean Martinon offers a heated performance. It seems to me that the melody sounds more lively, dancing and flowing with flute than violin. Just my feeling though.

I'm a bit ambivalent towards the Flute Concerto. I think it's an interesting alternative to the Violin Concerto, but, for me, it'll never replace the original. Rampal, of course, wanted Khachaturian to write him an original work, but politely declined the offer and suggested he arrange his Violin Concerto for flute. So while I do respect the work Rampal did, Khachaturian's heart isn't in the work of course as it was the violin that the composer had intended.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I don't know why I prefer the flute version. Again, it sounds spontaneous and flowing to me. Plus, the orchestra in this recording is wonderful- candescent performance. I think that the albums of Violin concerto by Simonyan and Pine are excellent. As for authenticity in terms of the composer's intended aestheticism, certainly the Violin concerto is more authentic. Come to think of it, I similarly prefer the Bach's transcribed works of Vivaldi and others to the original works. As for the entire Bach keyboard works, however, I largely prefer harpsichord to piano (or guitar). Anyway, I will keep listening both the violin and flute concertos. I hope nobody will make a trumpet or organ version that will sound good to me!

I'm a bit ambivalent towards the Flute Concerto. I think it's an interesting alternative to the Violin Concerto, but, for me, it'll never replace the original. Rampal, of course, wanted Khachaturian to write him an original work, but politely declined the offer and suggested he arrange his Violin Concerto for flute. So while I do respect the work Rampal did, Khachaturian's heart isn't in the work of course as it was the violin that the composer had intended.

[Mirror Image]

I don't know why I prefer the flute version. Again, it sounds spontaneous and flowing to me. Plus, the orchestra in this recording is wonderful- candescent performance. I think that the albums of Violin concerto by Simonyan and Pine are excellent. As for authenticity in terms of the composer's intended aestheticism, certainly the Violin concerto is more authentic. Come to think of it, I similarly prefer the Bach's transcribed works of Vivaldi and others to the original works. As for the entire Bach keyboard works, however, I largely prefer harpsichord to piano (or guitar). Anyway, I will keep listening both the violin and flute concertos. I hope nobody will make a trumpet or organ version that will sound good to me!

Honestly, I don't really associate the flute with Khachaturian, although I know he's written some great parts for the instrument throughout his works. If there was one woodwind instrument I thought would hold up well to his writing style, it would be the clarinet. The clarinet, out of all the woodwind instruments, has a certain 'attitude' to it and this character suits Khachaturian, IMHO. I'd love to have heard a Trumpet Concerto from his as well.

[Mirror Image]

Compositional Spotlight:

Gayane



Aram Khachaturian's ballet Gayane, variously spelled "Gayne," "Gayaneh," and "Gayané," had its premiere at the Kirov Ballet on December 9, 1942, in wartime. The ballet's story concerned a young woman named Gayane living on a collective farm of which her father is the chairman. Gayane helps entrap a spy bent on stealing Soviet geological secrets. That clunker of a Communist plot may explain why recordings of the entire ballet have been hard to find in recent decades, even though Gayane spawned one of the last of the great orchestral warhorses, the Sabre Dance. Originally part of a suite of ethnic dances in the ballet's second act, the Sabre Dance is an irresistible piece of fun that's known and loved far beyond the confines of classical music fandom. Its appeal partly derives from its combination of a highly dissonant element, an alternation between major and minor sevenths with full-blown, hell-for-leather, stomp-your-feet forward motion.

The neglect of the rest of Khachaturian's music is a shame, for the ballet has many noteworthy moments of folkloric flavor beyond the Sabre Dance. The story resolves itself in praise for the friendship among the various peoples of the Soviet Union, a development that gave the Georgian-born and Armenian-begotten Khachaturian plenty of room to explore the rhythms and textures of Central Asian folk music. Two of the other dances in the Act II set evokes a group much in the news, the Kurds, and in general Gayane did much to inspire a folkloristic strain in postwar Soviet music even as its composer suffered condemnation at the hands of Stalinist cultural thugs. Gayane, whose music Khachaturian created for Russian ballerina Nina Anisimova, enjoyed several revivals in the years after its composition, and each time Khachaturian tinkered with the score. One indication of the music's riches and its popularity in its own day is that the composer extracted three orchestral suites from the music during and after the ballet's composition.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

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I've really become rather smitten with this ballet. I'm planning on revisiting it again tomorrow. What really impressed me is the fact that Khachaturian can cover so many emotions in a single work --- it's almost like a lifetime's worth of experience all crammed into one work. There's joyful exuberance, sadness, timeless beauty, fiery passion, etc. I'll be honest and say that in the past I've written Khachaturian off as a some kind of cheap thrill composer and nothing more, but, as time has progressed, one begins to see the error in that kind of snap judgement, which I know we're all guilty of. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy those 'highlights' from the ballets and so forth, but I didn't take a deeper listen into what the complete ballets had to offer vs. mere highlights. He's slowly becoming one of my favorites, but I still have a long way to go before I can really access the entire scope of his oeuvre and compositional style.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

+1 🔥🔥🔥

There is cuteness in his music.

[Mirror Image]

+1 🔥🔥🔥

There is cuteness in his music.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'cuteness' but I guess it's complimentary.

[Symphonic Addict]

On a related note, have you or anyone else seen this documentary?



It's in my queue and I'm wondering whether I should pull the trigger or not as I do find his own bio to be quite interesting.

No, I haven't, John, but I know that this kind of material is very enlightening.

[Symphonic Addict]

Compositional Spotlight:

Gayane



Aram Khachaturian's ballet Gayane, variously spelled "Gayne," "Gayaneh," and "Gayané," had its premiere at the Kirov Ballet on December 9, 1942, in wartime. The ballet's story concerned a young woman named Gayane living on a collective farm of which her father is the chairman. Gayane helps entrap a spy bent on stealing Soviet geological secrets. That clunker of a Communist plot may explain why recordings of the entire ballet have been hard to find in recent decades, even though Gayane spawned one of the last of the great orchestral warhorses, the Sabre Dance. Originally part of a suite of ethnic dances in the ballet's second act, the Sabre Dance is an irresistible piece of fun that's known and loved far beyond the confines of classical music fandom. Its appeal partly derives from its combination of a highly dissonant element, an alternation between major and minor sevenths with full-blown, hell-for-leather, stomp-your-feet forward motion.

The neglect of the rest of Khachaturian's music is a shame, for the ballet has many noteworthy moments of folkloric flavor beyond the Sabre Dance. The story resolves itself in praise for the friendship among the various peoples of the Soviet Union, a development that gave the Georgian-born and Armenian-begotten Khachaturian plenty of room to explore the rhythms and textures of Central Asian folk music. Two of the other dances in the Act II set evokes a group much in the news, the Kurds, and in general Gayane did much to inspire a folkloristic strain in postwar Soviet music even as its composer suffered condemnation at the hands of Stalinist cultural thugs. Gayane, whose music Khachaturian created for Russian ballerina Nina Anisimova, enjoyed several revivals in the years after its composition, and each time Khachaturian tinkered with the score. One indication of the music's riches and its popularity in its own day is that the composer extracted three orchestral suites from the music during and after the ballet's composition.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've really become rather smitten with this ballet. I'm planning on revisiting it again tomorrow. What really impressed me is the fact that Khachaturian can cover so many emotions in a single work --- it's almost like a lifetime's worth of experience all crammed into one work. There's joyful exuberance, sadness, timeless beauty, fiery passion, etc. I'll be honest and say that in the past I've written Khachaturian off as a some kind of cheap thrill composer and nothing more, but, as time has progressed, one begins to see the error in that kind of snap judgement, which I know we're all guilty of. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy those 'highlights' from the ballets and so forth, but I didn't take a deeper listen into what the complete ballets had to offer vs. mere highlights. He's slowly becoming one of my favorites, but I still have a long way to go before I can really access the entire scope of his oeuvre and compositional style.

Glad to see you fell in love with Gayaneh, John. It really is a masterpiece IMO.

[Mirror Image]

No, I haven't, John, but I know that this kind of material is very enlightening.

I sure hope so! I love composer documentaries and, if anything, I'll find out something that I haven't already read about.

Glad to see you fell in love with Gayaneh, John. It really is a masterpiece IMO.

It sure is! An astonishing ballet.

[Maestro267]

How easy is the plot to follow? And from a musical perspective, how much of Gay(a)ne(h) is plot advancement and actual drama vs mere divertissement?

How much "depth" is there to this score vs. his other orchestral works. I fully realize I'm currently judging this with little evidence, but I have the assumption that Khachaturian's ballets are a bit like Shostakovich's Golden Age, ie. banal, with no depth or profundity to them. I've given up on that score, I'll stick to the symphonies and concertos for Shostakovich. To be clear, I want to be wrong on this front. I want to like these ballets. A ballet score by someone with the orchestrational genius of these Soviet composers should be right up my street, but aside from Prokofiev, the master of Soviet ballet, nothing else has reached the same glorious heights.

[Mirror Image]

How easy is the plot to follow? And from a musical perspective, how much of Gay(a)ne(h) is plot advancement and actual drama vs mere divertissement?

How much "depth" is there to this score vs. his other orchestral works. I fully realize I'm currently judging this with little evidence, but I have the assumption that Khachaturian's ballets are a bit like Shostakovich's Golden Age, ie. banal, with no depth or profundity to them. I've given up on that score, I'll stick to the symphonies and concertos for Shostakovich. To be clear, I want to be wrong on this front. I want to like these ballets. A ballet score by someone with the orchestrational genius of these Soviet composers should be right up my street, but aside from Prokofiev, the master of Soviet ballet, nothing else has reached the same glorious heights.

To be honest with you, a ballet's 'plot' is never of much importance or a concern for mine. It's the music that tells the tale, IMHO. There is considerable depth in Khachaturian's Gayane, but if you're expecting Shostakovich-like pathos, then you're really barking up the wrong tree. There are many gorgeous moments in this ballet that took me aback and that had me questioning my opinion on Khachaturian. The end result is simple: I was wrong about his music and I'm glad I was. I disagree with your assessment of Shostakovich's The Golden Age lacking depth. One listen to that incredible Adagio from the ballet should change your mind. My problem with the Shostakovich is not its occasional lapses in banality, but the sheer length of the ballet. I have to say with the Khachaturian, however, I felt there were no such moments where I thought that the ballet would've been better if it was trimmed down by about 30 minutes. I say listen to Gayane with an open-mind and forget everything you know or thought you knew about the composer and listen to it on its own terms. You might be surprised by what you hear. Also, please try and track down the Tjeknavorian recording. That's the one to hear.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I like the deceptively-simple music of Gaynne while I like his flamboyant and sumptuous symphonies as well. As for the plot, it is just a communist propaganda- the  civilized and moral Russians educating uncivilized Armenians. That's why the ballet is less popular than the Spartacus in spite of the better composition.

Thank you for your opinion. Skeptical opinions are important and productive opinions.

How easy is the plot to follow? And from a musical perspective, how much of Gay(a)ne(h) is plot advancement and actual drama vs mere divertissement?

How much "depth" is there to this score vs. his other orchestral works. I fully realize I'm currently judging this with little evidence, but I have the assumption that Khachaturian's ballets are a bit like Shostakovich's Golden Age, ie. banal, with no depth or profundity to them. I've given up on that score, I'll stick to the symphonies and concertos for Shostakovich. To be clear, I want to be wrong on this front. I want to like these ballets. A ballet score by someone with the orchestrational genius of these Soviet composers should be right up my street, but aside from Prokofiev, the master of Soviet ballet, nothing else has reached the same glorious heights.

[kyjo]

How much "depth" is there to this score vs. his other orchestral works. I fully realize I'm currently judging this with little evidence, but I have the assumption that Khachaturian's ballets are a bit like Shostakovich's Golden Age, ie. banal, with no depth or profundity to them. I've given up on that score, I'll stick to the symphonies and concertos for Shostakovich. To be clear, I want to be wrong on this front. I want to like these ballets. A ballet score by someone with the orchestrational genius of these Soviet composers should be right up my street, but aside from Prokofiev, the master of Soviet ballet, nothing else has reached the same glorious heights.

Khachaturian and Shostakovich were two very different composers. Khachaturian was deeply influenced by Armenian folk music - especially in his ballets - and used it to color his music with a bright, earthy feel that generally doesn't try to aim at profundity. Shostakovich, on the other hand, was a more "abstract", "serious" composer who saw himself as working in the symphonic tradition of Beethoven, Mahler, etc. His music also reflects the anxiety and uneasiness of his time and place more so than does Khachaturian's. That doesn't mean one composer is better than the other, just that they had two very different approaches to composition. That said, probably the closest Khachaturian got to Shostakovich in seriousness and ambition is in his 2nd Symphony, which IMO can stand comparison with the finest symphonies of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. So, if you're still not convinced that Khachaturian's music can have depth, give the 2nd Symphony a try!

[Maestro267]

To be honest with you, a ballet's 'plot' is never of much importance or a concern for mine. It's the music that tells the tale, IMHO.

It is for me. I have to know exactly what the music represents to gain an understanding of the music. If I may use another composer's ballet as an example...I feel you could cut the vast majority of Act 3 of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty and you'd still have the same plot. 50 minutes of music and all it basically says is "They got married and lived happily ever after". I lose attention there. I want dramatic music that advances the story.

I disagree with your assessment of Shostakovich's The Golden Age lacking depth. One listen to that incredible Adagio from the ballet should change your mind. My problem with the Shostakovich is not its occasional lapses in banality, but the sheer length of the ballet.

That Adagio is about 10 minutes out of the ballet's total of around 150. As you pointed out in the following sentence. It's little enough to say the ballet lacks in depth compared to other scores.