VA: Modulation Necklace: New Music from Armenia
New Focus Recordings

One of the more salient aspects of this release has to do with how comfortably this collection of contemporary music from Armenia sits alongside musical traditions of other countries. While its material is deeply rooted in the cultural soil of its homeland, Modulation Necklace suggests that its composers have been influenced as much by the music of non-Armenian artists as that originating within its own fertile borders. The result is a satisfying and at times illuminating recording whose pieces draw from multiple traditions, Armenian of course mostly. It's a bit telling, however, that the album was recorded at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music and that the bios for two of the composers, Artashes Kartalyan and Ashot Kartalyan, indicate they're Los Angeles-based.

Credited as the project's Executive Producer and Artistic Director, violinist Movses Pogossian midwifed Modulation Necklace into being. On the nearly eighty-minute release, six works by five composers are performed: Artur Avanesov's represented by two works, while the Kartalyans, Michel Petrossian, and Ashot Zohrabyan each have a single piece performed. Arrangements extend from solo—Avanesov playing piano on selections from his Feux Follets cycle—to duo, trio, quartet, and quintet groupings. Pogossian himself appears on only one selection, but as the project's prime mover his presence looms large.

Scored for piano quintet, Avanesov's Quasi harena maris (“Like the Land of the Sea”) begins the set on a sombre note, the tone perhaps attributable in part to its source of inspiration: a heavy passage from The Book of Job. Microtonality creeps into the writing before things take a particularly expressive turn, the music fluctuating between emotional extremes until the composer's piano instates measured calm. If the elements seem to take on a somewhat conversational form, it might be because the composer treats the string quartet as a choir “chanting” the Biblical text and the pianist as a “protagonist” whose playing eventually turns improvisational. Regardless, the work's constantly evolving design makes for a gripping twelve minutes. Like the opener, Zohrabyan's Novelette starts with strings alone, plaintive lines woven between the violin, viola, and cello, and also shares with Quasi harena maris a predilection for expressive outpourings. Avanesov again appears on piano, though the larger focus is on strings, Antonio Lysy's cello in particular. He guides the others through the thorniest of thickets until the baton's handed to violinist Varty Manouelian, who caps the fifteen-minute performance with a supplicating, high-register solo.

Rather playful by comparison is Petrossian's A Fiery Flame, a Flaming Fire, which draws on Armenian folkloric music and the traditional song “Kars.” Conceived also as a meditation on the mercurial, multi-faceted nature of identity (Petrossian himself is Aremenian by birth, Russian by education, and French by culture), the piece shifts between contrasting moods and textures, violin, cello, and piano constantly engaged in rapid transitions for the full eleven minutes. Incorporating texts by Vahan Tekeyan, Artashes Kartalyan's Tekeyan Triptych is an album high point, in part due to the stellar vocalizing of mezzo-soprano Danielle Segen. Accompanied by string quartet, she imbues the gracefully flowing “Es Siretsi (I Have Loved)” with a lyrical tenderness befitting words dealing with passionate love. Complementing it nicely are “Papaq (A Wish)" and “Hashvehardar (A Summary)," the former a gentle waltz and the latter a sober reflection by the poet on his own life with its many peaks and valleys.

The album's final two pieces part company with the others in presenting first a five-part suite for saxophone and percussion and secondly seven solo piano selections composed and performed by Avanesov. Contrasts abound in Ashot Kartalyan's Suite for Saxophone and Percussion, from the combination of sinuous soprano saxophone (Katisse Buckingham) and rambunctious drumming (Dustin Donahue) in the opening movement to the gentle, ballad-styled musings of sax and vibraphone in the fourth. A serpentine intermingling of soprano and marimba colours the second, whereas a regulated pulse drives the third, marimba and woodwind here engaging in something groove-centered before a dreamier central section. In another surprise, the final movement's rollicking feel owes more to jazz than anything remotely classical.

Avanesov's solo piano collection Feux Follets contains approximately seventy works, seven of which appear here. Diverse in mood, tempo, and dynamics, they're concise statements, with only one pushing past the two-minute mark. In appearing alone, the artistry of Avanesov's playing is especially evident, whether it be voicing tenderness or executing rapid runs. Brevity shouldn't be equated with superficiality either: the pieces hold up under scrutiny as material of substance, the composer referencing Luciano Berio in one (“Let It Be Forgotten”) and medieval French song (“Quand l'aubespine fleurit”), Baroque harpsichord music (“Gespenstertanz”), and Armenian folksong (“Mon cœur reste brûlé”) elsewhere.

February 2020