The Armenian Studies Program web page is sponsored by a grant from
The Bertha and John Garabedian Charitable
Foundation, Fresno.
Pianist Sergei Babayan has
nothing to prove to his fans in
Babayan drew a full house
to
the Concert Hall at
Rather than putting on a
tour-de-force of pianism as he has in the past,
Babayan brought a program that
focused on the spiritually expressive potential of his instrument. Opening with
“Fur Alina” by Arvo Part
is an unusual way to draw in an audience. This music is
quiet and slow, and the harmony changes little throughout the brief span of
the
composition.
In the hands of Babayan,
what might be just a few notes turns into a timeless experience of speechless
beauty. Babayan
was in no hurry to finish phrases or get on with the piece. He
allowed space to breathe, and he allowed time for notes to recede to
silence.
While the composition might not be groundbreaking in terms of harmony and
rhythm, the singular feel of the music sets Part
in his own camp of living composers.
As the last notes faded,
the audience sat spellbound. There would be no applause here, the magic
would
have evaporated. After a moment of complete silence, Babayan began Liszt’s
Ballade No. 2, the loudest and most dynamically expressive
music on the program.
Babayan demonstrated his understanding of the music by creating the wash of
sound in the background and then bringing
the themes out front.
His demeanor here was not
filled with excitement and energy. Instead, he took the tone of presenting a
sober moment
of truth from Liszt’s oeuvre. This is no slouch of a piece of
music, but the unfolding harmony sounds like something Moses might have
written
were he a composer.
Brahms’ Theme and
Variations in D Minor, an arrangement from his String Sextet Op. 18, provided a
brief diversion
from the serious nature of the program, and Babayan seemed to
enjoy the rolling chords and various treatments of the themes. He also
delivered
Liszt’s passionate setting of two Schubert songs with a clear eye on
the meaning of the program.
The first half of the
program ended
with Schumann’s Variations on a Theme by Beethoven. The theme
comes from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and Schumann presents it unabridged
the
first time. Then Schumann’s imagination takes over, and while his
development of the idea does not match Beethoven’s in immediate appeal,
the
growth of the idea to the stunning and riveting summation transforms
Beethoven’s more primitive musical constraints into seminal
material for Arvo
Part.
The end of the set matched the beginning, with
Babayan unwinding Schumann’s melody and countermelody over an
unchanging
harmony. It took a few seconds after the end for the audience to realize that
it was time to applaud.
The second half featured
the
Suite in A Minor of Jean-Philippe Rameau, the great 17th-century theorist
who wrote the book on tonal harmony and sealed the modal
system into its
churchyard grave. While Rameau the composer has achieved the following of Bach
or Vivaldi, his music belongs in the
same museum, as the other Baroque masters.
After all, it was Rameau who put into words the argument for a functional tonal
system.
How
this fits into a
program of highly emotional music is clear. Without the foundation of Rameau
and the other Baroque composers, the music
of Part, Brahms, and Schumann would
not have been possible. Moreover in the hands of Babayan, this “intellectual”
music of Rameau becomes
as spiritually profound and expressive as the other
music on the program. Maybe it’s not era or the style, maybe it’s that some
compositions
than others elevate the spirit of the listener.
Certainly, when Babayan is
the pianist, the music is going to reach the heart of the
audience.
George Warren, Ph.D.,
directs the music program at
