Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos ~ Khachatryan

Aram Khachaturian (Composer), Jean Sibelius (Composer), Emmanuel Krivine (Conductor), Sinfonia Varsovia (Orchestra), Sergey Khachatryan (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Sergey Khachatryan
• Orchestra: Sinfonia Varsovia
• Conductor: Emmanuel Krivine
• Composer: Aram Khachaturian, Jean Sibelius
• Audio CD (March 16, 2004)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Valois / Naive
• ASIN: B0000CNTJH
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,499 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Début, June 5, 2004

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J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos ~ Khachatryan (Audio CD)

I had the pleasure of hearing the American recital début of violinist Sergey Khachatryan a year or so ago. I was extremely impressed by his playing - not only his virtuosity and élan but the remarkable maturity for someone so young; he was born in 1985. I've been on the lookout for any recordings he might make. This disc containing both the Sibelius and Khachaturian concerti lives up to my expectations. Indeed, I would put his Sibelius performance up against any I've ever heard. I can't pretend to have heard all the extant recordings of the Sibelius but I am familiar with those of Leonid Kavakos (in both versions - with the original finale as well as the one Sibelius replaced it with), Mutter, Mullova, Perlman, and of the irreplaceable Oistrakh. The best performance I ever heard live was an incandescent one by Pinchas Zukerman. Khachatryan may be over the top at times in this piece, especially in the finale, but the concerto can benefit from this kind of all-out approach. The Sinfonia Varsovia, which I take to have a rather smallish string section, has a lean sound that actually benefits the piece. Conductor Emmanuel Krivine occasionally lets the music almost bog down in the second movement and I truly believe he is led away from that by the relaxed but always forward-moving playing of his soloist, young Mr Khachatryan. The sound of the orchestra at the beginning of that second movement is ravishing and it is matched by the stunning sotto voce entrance of the soloist.

The Khachaturian benefits from a red-blooded performance; this is not subtle music. The orchestra's lean profile could have benefitted from a fuller string sound, but it's not a big matter. I feel fairly sure that Khachatryan's Armenian background informs his feel for the folk-inflected melodies used by his Armenian near-namesake, Aram Khachaturian; this is particularly true in the melismatic Orientalisms of the second movement. In the faster passages there is a raw energy and edge in Khachatryan's playing that makes the music almost unbearably visceral, and I suspect that this is precisely the approach Khachaturian had in mind. Whether or no, it is an exciting reading. Young Khachatryan has slancio to spare and he is matched in this by Krivine and his Polish orchestra. Again, the benchmark recording for this concerto is David Oistrakh's 1944 effort, but Khachatryan's is in very nearly the same class and has the advantage of being in modern sound. I must add, though, that there is a spiffy new recording on Naxos played by Mihaela Martin that also includes Khachaturian's less-known 'Concerto Rhapsody' for violin and orchestra. Still, this one is a bit more exhilarating.

Highly recommended.

Scott Morrison

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars STAR FROM THE EAST, July 23, 2004

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DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos ~ Khachatryan (Audio CD)

It would be interesting to try a minor experiment with this record. Play some extract from it - almost any part would do - to some experienced musicians and ask them simply to picture the soloist. If the image of a small and slightly-built teenager comes to anyone's mind I shall be very surprised indeed. In his contribution to the liner note Sergey Khachatryan notes that his next project is to be Shostakovich. It was in Shostakovich that I heard him two weeks ago with the BBC Philharmonic, and mightily impressed I was. What Khachatryan's playing has is quality - quality in the tone, quality in the phrasing, quality in the rhythm, and I need hardly say total and perfect quality in the intonation.

This record was made in July 2003. It was time to get a cd version of the Sibelius anyhow to supplement my LP account of the first recording of the work, done in 1935 but sounding surprisingly well still, by Heifetz and Beecham, and this particular soloist struck me as a good bet. So it has turned out. For me, the Sibelius concerto sometimes works and sometimes not. In his thoughtful book on the composer Robert Layton hints that its style is not completely consistent, and I have heard many performances that leave me feeling the same way. From the symphonies it would be hard to imagine Sibelius as a concerto writer, not a difficulty one would experience in listening to Mozart Beethoven or Brahms as symphonists. Nothing in the finales of the Sibelius symphonies is remotely suggestive of concerto style for one thing. When it comes to the bit, Sibelius turns out a finale in something at least resembling the normal idiom of such, a slow movement with more 19th century lyricism than is customary from him, and a first movement that is a strange mixture of that kind of lyricism and a remote cold idiom that reminds me that the fourth symphony was not far in the future. This is presumably what left Mr Layton less than convinced, but the right artists can overcome the difficulty as I have always felt Heifetz and Beecham do triumphantly. And now here is Khachatryan, with the Sinfonia Varsovia under Emmanuel Krivine, pulling off the trick again. Speeds in the outer movements are a little slower, but speed is not the issue. The issue is -- is this work really coherent? If it can be, it must be.

Khachaturian, for me, is not really a heavyweight composer. He is not quite so relentlessly traditional in idiom as Myaskovsky, but nothing here and not much elsewhere in his work can surely have given much difficulty to Zhdanov. Naturally the Armenian elements in his music have a special significance for the soloist, and even from my own standpoint the slow movement, a very long one, rises to real eloquence particularly near the end. The soloist shows the same mastery as in the Sibelius, although I fancy his task was a little easier, and the work is a thoroughly welcome addition to my collection.

In general I was impressed by the Sinfonia Varsovia, particularly by some vivid woodwind work in the first movement of the Sibelius. The recording is good in general too, if just a touch rowdy in some of the bigger tuttis, but we have got used to such a high standard these days that we can now afford to be very particular indeed. I feel privileged to have heard an emerging superstar so early in his career. If he is as mature and accomplished as this now, what is he going to develop into? I read his plans with interest in the liner note. These are fairly conservative, as I suppose we might expect at this stage, and I might even be persuaded to listen to the Tchaikovsky concerto if I get the chance to hear it from Khachatryan.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A major young talent with a rich inner life, July 27, 2007

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Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos ~ Khachatryan (Audio CD)

The violin exposes a soloist's inner life as no other instrument does except the human voice, and the young Armenian Sergey Khachatryan's inner life seems rich with elegaic moods and rhapsodic flights of fancy. Like the first two reviewers here, I heard him play in cocnert and was bowled over. Khachatryan has a wonderful singing style and deep, mellow tone. His approach to both these works is an unusual combination of quiet intensity and unself-conscious technical command (showmanship being reined in for the sake of poetry. It's a tribute to Khachatryan's charisma that he can hold your attention completely in quiet reverie that touches on stasis.

Kirvine and his unknown (to me) Vercovia orchestra do very well as accompanists -- the Sibelius concerto in particular feels newly minted, with Kirvine sensitively following his soloist's inward approach. The sonics from Naive are fine -- the violin tone hasn't the least shrillness about it. As for the interpretations, as I've indicated, Khachatryan avoids flashiness, and in so doing he elevates the semi-junky Khachaturian concerto to a height of musicality I've never heard before. The Sibelius performance is the most polished and inward that I've ever come across.

Out of his young generation (Han, Gringolds, the somewhat older Daniel Hope, and Julia Fischer) Khachatryan may be the one who turns out to be the next Menuhin. Highly recommended.