Customer Reviews

Khachaturian, Sibelius: Violin Concertos ~ Khachatryan

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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

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.

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.

We all know that fields of gravity cross and criss-cross our local solar system as planets spin in their orbits around our sun. We also may know of the immense amount of space debris that flurries this way and that, here and there and seemingly everywhere. When you put the two realities together, you may feel you are walking down a historic but neglected city street where the character of the neighborhood has fallen prey to transience and forgetfulness and poverty. We peer dimly into an unglorious human future for our civilization that promises only to be punctuated with inevitable crisis as one brute hand of circumstance or the other hammers in fits against the nearest wall of the human heart. If you find yourself noticing the dimming lights of humanism in our current era, then by all means you should get this CD and listen to it repeatedly before you make any major decisions.

Like a rising star against the velvet horizon edging an otherwise vaulted and gloomy night sky, the fiddler here is a new talent named Sergey Khachatryan. After listening to this disc, I am very pleased to report that he is indeed the genuine article. His energy and innocence demonstrate how much he still loves music. Unlike some artists of his generation, ... he is barely out of his late teens, ... the sheer physicality of his playing somehow demonstrates how profoundly one with his instrument a great artist may become. Sergey has apparent complete mastery of all that his fiddle may offer .... as if he were that magic Rumpelstiltskin of fairy tale who could spin gold from straw. This Sergey can also spin music shining with silver, platinum, and that rarest of metals ....joi de vivre. His fiddle is a Guarnerius on loan from some German fans, and he uses it to incredible and glorious effect. You are no doubt vulnerable to this spell to the extent that you may have been feeling like a princess locked in a high tower, away from the air and the sun and the green beauty of the fields. You may start to think that the violin is surely the King of Instruments.

Though Sergey is undoubtedly a representative of the true Russian school of violin playing, he represents an uncommon amalgam of talent with heritage. His string tone has a true emotional center, glowing with the sort of hot penetrating fire we have previously come to know and love in many Russian string players. Sergey's hot sound does not suffer any detriment from being compared with, say, David Oistrakh himself. But Sergey also has something else, something more. He has a kind of celestial luminosity and a Russian elegance (think, Leonid Kogan?) that transform and complete his string tone. The result is that his upper registers penetrate directly to the heart, without requiring any added noise or over-acting. At fast or slow tempos, his musical sound breathes or hovers or dances. Phrased alchemy purges all the base metals and leaves only the purest and most gleaming tonal treasure behind. This sort of fiddle playing is more ballet than athletics or tumbling.

It is no surprise to read that Kachatryan won the Helsinki Sibelius prize, several years back when he was only fifteen years old. Here on this CD he surely recreates, or perhaps even surpasses, that pinnacle. Sergey puts his considerable gifts completely at the disposal of the composer. He conjures both the composer as ordinary human being and as a kind of Finnish mystic. This CD is the first one in a very long time that I thought could rub shoulders with the legendary Jascha Heifitz recording, and hold a decent musical conversation with that great master as an equal. If anything, Khachatryan surpasses Heifitz in depth and breadth of deep humanity. Sergey has an uncanny yet musical heart as big as the famed Finnish forests.

To fill out the remainder of the disc, we are treated to Armenian composer Aram Khatchaturian's only violin concerto. On most fiddles, with most players, this concerto turns into an over-heated folk-festival of garish colors and heavy-handed dramatic pointing for both the solo violin and the rest of the orchestra. It is too easy for this concerto to go nowhere.

Applying himself, Sergey returns this concerto safely and brilliantly to the musical center. He finds narrative where other fiddlers find only repetition. He never, ever has to be loud to be convincing. The orientalized musical noodling in the slow movement that wears on your nerves with so many other fiddlers, becomes ever so mysteriously whispered. You find yourself hearing the authentic yet exotic voice of that famous story-teller, Sheherazade herself. There is perfume and romance, but communicatively embodied. I don't think I have ever before wanted to repeat the slow movement. But Sergey made me hear the Armenian soul of this concerto.

Well I have been so taken with the fiddler that I have hardly mentioned the conductor and the orchestra. They deserve high praise, too. The Sinfonia Varsovia is a wonderful band that can sound perfect for Mozart, but too small for Beethoven. Let loose upon the late Romantic breadth of each of these concertos, they finally sound perfectly fine for both. Emmanuel Krivine keeps tempos moving, but he never sounds superficial or rushed. He never seems to be embarrassed by the music's large gesture or the massed heft of the orchestra. He is content to be background for the soloist without lapsing in attention. The woodwinds are particularly distinguished. Thus, the wonder of this young fiddler is recognized and encouraged and fully supported by all involved. You feel as if everyone in Sinfonia Varsovia was paying just as much attention to their music, as was Sergey to his own. You feel that Krivine values both concertos as music of symphonic scope and power. In short, this CD can be very highly recommended on all counts. It is, indeed, a five star labor of great love.

By no means whimsically or freshly swayed by the beauty of the music itself, and after having listened to various interpretations including those of patent greats, it is clear to me that this work of Khachatryan's is the most measured, exact, and mellifluous of all. There is simply so much symmetry, meter in his notes. Yet, there is also fire, and so much more ever suggested. The only critique I can think of is that I WISH I could hear it live. This rendition belongs in the place where music meets itself -- realizing it sometimes forgets where it comes from: the genius of 2, and not one!

As for Khachatryan on Kchaturian, the oddysey continued.

I had the pleasure of hearing Khachatryan perform the Khachaturian concerto with the Cleveland orchestra the same year this recording was released. It impressed the heck out of me and I preordered this recording the next day. I don't have the problems with the conductor and orchestra which some of the reviewers do, although I think if they had recorded the Cleveland live performance, it would top this one. The Sibelius was also very enjoyable, although I would have preferred Prokofiev or

Shostakovich for an all Russian release. The soloist's playing in both concertos is

spectacular.

I was curious to hear this recording because one of my students recommended it highly. Sure enough, I was quite impressed, especially by the Sibelius. But I had objections, too. In terms of tone, general technique and intonation, Sergey lacks very little. His playing is often very beautiful. He has the gift of expression 'between the notes', the notes falling naturally and gracefully on the fingerboard. The playing is never boring. There is great clarity in the general execution. Nothing inhibits him. Phrases make sense. They breathe.

What's wrong? He occasionally looses presence as the soloist. There are two occasions in the first movement, at the beginning of an entrance, where there just isn't enough sound to carry the musical argument. At first I thought it might be a problem with the recording balance. But after the second movement, I was convinced otherwise. Sergey generally takes a symphonic approach to this work, at times participating on an equal footing with the orchestra. This can be admirable, especially in Mozart or Beethoven. But not in Sibelius. For instance, at the very opening of the second movement, the violin is much too soft. It is an intimate opening, for sure, but the violin has to dominate nonetheless. Another instance, at the ascending octave scales against the descending ones in the winds, the soloist is barely heard (especially at the bottom). Because of this curious lack of presence, the 2nd movement hardly resonates. The violin part seems almost an obbligato voice to the full orchestra. The third movement fares much better. Sibelius often pits the natural tessitura of the violin against low sounds in the orchestra, so the violin stands out more. But even the scales right before the final flourish are much too subdued.

All in all, I would say that this was a bold attempt to interpret the Sibelius in a personal way, by an extremely gifted, young violinist. And to that extent, Bravo! Whether it is entirely successful or not depends on the listener. To this one, not quite so.

I might have felt better disposed towards Sergey Khachatryan's interpretation of Sibelius' Violin Concerto if I hadn't heard it immediately after those of Heifetz (the premiere recording in 1935 with Beecham, Heifetz Plays Strauss (Violin Sonata op. 18), Sibelius (Violin Concerto), Prokofiev (Violin Concerto 2), and the stereo remake in 1959 with Walter Hendl, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Glazunov: Violin Concertos [Hybrid SACD]) and the recent one by Hilary Hahn (EP Salonen conducting, Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36/Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47). Khachatryan is a young Armenian virtuoso (he was born in 1985) and the youngest winner (in 2000) in the history of the Jan Sibelius competition.

He takes a broad, gentle and lyrical view of Sibelius' Violin Concerto, more open to its plaintive qualities than to its epic sweep. If I may dare, under Khachatryan's bow it often sounds "Jewish", with the same wailing character associated to Jewish laments written by Bloch, Achron and the likes.

The approach works best in the middle movement, ample-phrased without ligering, long-breathed, brooding, as fine as anybody's. The first movement can also take that kind of approach, although I find that it lacks in some spots the kind of tension Heifetz brought to it, and that Khachatryan lingers and fusses too much over the phrases in the cadenza. As for the finale, heard on its own it might sound OK, but you just need to compare it to Hahn-Salonen to realize how much it lacks in muscle, drive, tension. Here, I suspect that Khachatryan's more lyrical and relaxed approach may not be just a matter of interpretive choice: taking the lyrical and relaxed view enables you to spend just a breath more time getting over the movement's fiendish leaps and other technical difficulties - and even there, compared to Hahn, Khachatryan lacks technical fluency (but truth is, compared to Hahn, even Heifetz sounds lacking in technical fluency). You may say that Khachatryan is an intelligent enough musician to make music of his technical limitations but, heard immediately after Hilary Hahn's dazzling, breath-taking, gamboling race through, he simply lets your adenalin flat.

Khachatryan isn't helped by Emmanuel Krivine, either. This is the most uninvolved and generalized conducting I've ever heard in this piece, entirely lacking in tension, skiping over all the fine details of orchestration, articulation or expression. For instance, the cello and double bass rfz marks at 6:14 into the first movements hardly register, robbing the passage of all its dramatic underpinning. This is one example out of fifty I could have given. In fact, just about every time there is a point in the orchestral score where you wait to hear what the orchestra will deliver - Krivine fails, and delivers nothing. To be fair, Messr. Jean-Pierre Loisil and Jean-Martial Golaz - the recording producer and sound engineer - are also to blame: the recording offers no instrumental presence whatsoever, everything sounds terribly distant and generalized. Often it evoked those famous "Music minus one" discs that offer a Concerto's orchestral accompaniment without soloist to enable the student to practice - except that here, it was the solo line minus an orchestra!

Khachatryan's Khachaturian is better. First, Krivine is at least half awake here, at least in the outer movements - more of the orchestra comes out, although some dialoguing solo lines aren't as present as they might have, and the marvelous woodwind work between 4:22 and 6:40 in the finale lacks so much vividness that it looses all its wonderful sibelian overtones (ironically, in view of the coupling). Second, Khachatryan turns out an impassioned and fiery reading of the first movement, and his slowing down for the second, lyrical theme (1:52), though more pronounced than what the concerto's dedicatee and first performer David Oistrakh did here, remains an option that sits well with the music. His finale is also invigoratingly lively and bouncy. Third, in seven versions I've heard so far of this piece (including three by Oistrakh, and those of Ricci, Decca Recordings, 1950-1960 (Limited Edition), and Kogan, Khachaturian: Concerto for violin in Dm; Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78), this is the first one to play the first movement's cadenza complete (Oistrakh played not the printed one but his own, and all the others cut it, less or more); and hearing it, I hear nothing that deserves to be cut - too bad then that Khachatryan practices the small and, in my opinion, needless Oistrakh cut at 1:19 in the finale.

Unfortunately, in the second movement Krivine, Loisil and Golaz do it again: it is clear that they don't have the faintest clue how this music should sound. At first I wondered why I felt so emotionally uninvolved. Could it be that I had become jaded? So I went back to Oistrakh and Khachaturian to make sure (Khachaturian: Gayane Suite for orchestra No1; Concerto for violin in Dm), and within the first seconds it was all clear. With Krivine, every accent goes past unheeded, and sometimes it even sounds as if his orchestra is playing with one trumpet or none, instead of the three required by Khachaturian's scoring (and as a matter of fact, at 9:49 it sounds to me as if the trumpets have been replaced by the harp). As for the harp, when you should be hearing it, you really need the score to perceive that it is there (and at 9:22, I'm still not convinced it is playing). As a result everything is mellowed down and robbed of its poignant tension. But Khachatryan must also take some responsiblity. In the interview contained in the liner notes he confesses his admiration for Oistrakh, and sure enough, his reading of this movement is within a few seconds of Oistrakh's (his third recording and second with the composer conducting, in 1965, Khachaturian: Concerto for violin in Dm; Concerto for piano in Df). But it reminds me of the anecdote of this sixth-rate French conductor, astounded that, although he had adopted the tempos of Furtwangler in Beethoven's Fifth, it simply did not sound like Furtwangler. Well, Khachatryan may have the tempos of Oistrakh but (again unhelped by the lack of instrumental presence of the recording), he doesn't have his formidable bow tension, his throbbing intensity. Khachatryan plays the notes with genuine feeling and a beautiful tone. Oistrakh sings a heart-wrenching lament.

Khachatryan needs to mature a little and re-record this repertoire, with a conductor this time - and three trumpets.