Bel Canto Bows

Friday, December 11, 2009, 8 pm

Glenn Gould Studio, 250 Front Street West

ANI BATIKIAN, Violinist

Young Armenian violin sensation

PUCCINI Three Minuets

HOVHANESS Violin Concerto

KHACHATURIAN Masquerade Suite

STRAUSS Die Fledermaus

BARTOK Rumanian Dances

 

 

"Ani controls the violin with very strong technique, possesses a very beautiful tone and expresses her music with very good sense of style and personal sensitivity." Pierre Amoyal, Concert Violinist

"Ani embodies a rare combination of scholar and performer, both at the highest level." Curtis Price, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, London

"Player of great stature and powerful personality.... A real performer of the highest level" David Strange, Head of String Department Royal Academy of Music, London

"...a wonderful violinist despite her youth." Michael Tumelty, The Herald

Armenian violinist Ani Batikian entered the Yerevan State Conservatoire in Armenia at the age of 15, being the youngest student ever to study there and supported by a local scholarship. At the age of 19 she received an undergraduate and at the age of 20 a postgraduate diploma with honours.

Her charismatic personality and artistry go hand in hand with the violin, making her performance impressive and unforgettable. Ani displays boldness in the choice of pieces, which range from baroque to contemporary.
 

 

 

PROGRAM NOTES

 

Three Minuets by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

 

The three minuets were composed by the young Puccini while he was completing his studies at the conservatory. They were written originally for string quartet. Themes from these minuets were later used by the composer in his opera "Manon Lescaut".

 

Violin Concerto No. 2 by Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)       

 

Alan Hovhaness is one of America’s most idiosyncratic musical pioneers who sought a musical reconciliation between East and West, spiritual and mundane, long before it was fashionable to do so.

 

Born near Boston, Massachusetts to an Armenian father and a mother of Scottish ancestry, his upbringing was conventionally American. As a boy he composed in secret, once remarking "My family thought writing music was abnormal, so they would confiscate my music if they caught me in the act." An early musical mentor and personal friend was Sibelius, from whom Hovhaness perhaps acquired his love of long lyrical melodies.

 

The composer’s exposure to Armenian culture was around 1940 when he became organist at Boston’s Armenian cathedral. From 1944 began a series of works with Armenian titles or subject matter. He introduced his spirit murmur, where musical phrases are repeated over and over by each player independently to produce a buzzing textural blur. This so called ad libitum technique was later used by the European Avant Garde (beginning with Lutoslawksi and Ligeti in the 1960s). The Armenian phase reached its zenith with the 24-movement St. Vartan Symphony of 1950.

 

In the 1950s Hovhaness’ style became more Westernised, but some Armenian and also Indian influences remained prominent. Very noteworthy is his pioneering use of Indian cyclic rhythm concepts.

 

Following extended visits to India, Korea and Japan during 1959-62 to study the ancient Karnatic, Ah-ak, and Gagaku musical traditions, Hovhaness embarked on musical style incorporating Indo-Oriental idioms throughout the 1960s, a period when his music was at its most distant from Western models.

 

From the 1970s Eastern influences receded somewhat, though Hovhaness remained very prolific, reaching around Opus 450 by the time of his death. His output comprises music in almost every conceivable genre, from large scale oratorios, operas and symphonies down to piano sonatas and solo works for Oriental instruments.

 

Masquerade Suite by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)

String orchestra arrangement by Nurhan Arman

 

Khachaturian’s musical idiom was strongly marked by his Armenian heritage. His scores are treasured for their sensuous, singing melodies, colorful orchestration and irrestistible rhythms. Best known as the composer of vivid scores for the ballets Spartacus and Gayaneh, Khachaturian also wrote brilliant concertos, several symphonies, a great deal of film and theatre music, works for band, some chamber music and many popular songs.

 

Khachaturian composed Masquerade in 1941 as incidental music for a production of Mikhail Lermontov’s play of the same title. The Suite soon became a popular concert work. Sinfonia Toronto made the world premiere CD recording of the string orchestra arrangement by Nurhan Arman, created to celebrate Khachaturian’s centenary in 2003.

 

Die Fledermaus Overture by Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899)    

 

The overture of Die Fledermaus perfectly captures the spirit of the entire operetta score. Virtually every note of this operetta was inspired by the rhythms of the dances which were wildly popular all over Europe in 1874. Strauss was prolific in the composition of dances like the polka and the galop or can can.

Rumanian Dances by Bela Bartok (1881-1945)

Bartók is one of the most original, yet least revolutionary, of twentieth-century composers. His music reflects, above all, the folk music traditions of his native Hungary and the Balkans. He and his compatriot, Zoltan Kodaly, recorded and transcribed voluminous amounts of his material: Bartók's musical curiosity took him as far afield as Africa and the near East to study folk music. Bartók's compositions reflect the basic simplicity of folk music in one way or another, no matter how complex their actual construction might be.

In a brief autobiographical sketch, Bartók acknowledged how deeply he was influenced by the folk material he had collected:

“The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys. The greater part of the collected treasure, and the more valuable part, was in old ecclesiastical or old Greek modes, or based on more primitive (pentatonic) scales, and the melodies were full of the freest and most varied rhythmic phrases and changes of tempi...It became clear to me that the old modes, which had been forgotten in our music, had lost nothing of their vigor. Their new employment made new rhythmic combinations possible."

Together with an essentially forthright musical style, Bartók added sensuous and often exotic combinations of tone color, welded together by unsurpassed musical logic and skill in long-established classical techniques, particularly counterpoint and fugue. The best of Bartók’s music has both immediate appeal and depth to stand up after numerous hearings – the complementary features which mark works of greatness.

Bartók’s research into Roumanian folk music occupied him for several years, beginning in 1909, and produced a group of piano pieces based on the tunes he had heard. Bartók constructed the Roumanian Folk Dances from fiddle tunes he had found in Transylvania, following the original folk melodies without change.

Bartók biographer, Halsey Stevens, has written: “The seven dances vary greatly in character and in tempo, from the gentle, almost minuet-like Buciumeana to the brisk Poarg româneasc and the two brisk energetic closing dances, both called Mruntel. Like the peasant music of Hungary, the dances are almost entirely in 2/4 meter, but the Buciumeanais in 3/4 and the Poarg alternates between 3/4 and 2/4. The tunes are modal, with augmented seconds in two of them.”

Bartók originally wrote the Dances for piano, but in 1917 he arranged them for a small orchestra. Their popularity is evident in the numerous other arrangements that have been made for string orchestra (Arthur Willner), salon orchestra, and especially violin and piano (Zoltán Székely). 

$40 adult, $32 senior, $12 student

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