Dilijan Series' Next Season Program Announced!
DILIJAN CONCERT SERIES CELEBRATES ITS FIFTH SEASON
by Charles Fierro
For any arts organization, the fifth year is a significant landmark. At that point they have demonstrated viability, established their reputation and developed a following. Under the visionary leadership of its directors, Vatsche Barsoumian and Movses Pogossian, the Dilijan Chamber Music Series in Los Angeles has accomplished all this and more. It is now one of the jewels of the Southern California arts scene.
This is due to the consistent quality of their performances as well as to their unique mission: to present the classics of Western classical chamber music to Armenian-American audiences and to bring new Armenian music to a wider public.
No finer example of their success could be imagined than their concert of April 25 at Zipper Hall. In a program for string instruments, compositions by two titans of Western music flanked three pieces by the revered composer/musicologist Komitas (1869-1935). The futuristic complexities of two late Beethoven works (Grosse Fuge, Opus 133 and Cavatina from String Quartet, Opus 130) and J.S. Bach’s dazzling Goldberg Variations were the perfect foil for the profoundly moving Komitas songs arranged for string orchestra by Sergey Aslamazyan.
The conductorless 16-member UCLA Camarades String Ensemble delivered the Beethoven Grosse Fuge and Komitas pieces with panache and sensitivity. Violinists Guillaume Sutre and Movses Pogossian, violist Paula Karolak and cellist Antonio Lysy revealed the heartfelt emotion in the Beethoven Cavatina.
Bach's Goldberg Variations (in a remarkable transcription for string trio by Dmitry Sitkovetsky) sounded so completely idiomatic that one did not at all miss their original setting for harpsichord. Pogossian, Sutre and Lysy brought exhilarating tempos and authoritative virtuosity to the performance.
It was a stimulating concert experience, one that bodes well for the future of the Dilijan Series. At its conclusion, this writer, like the rest of the audience, left the hall energized with renewed optimism.
Charles Fierro is a concert pianist and Professor Emeritus of Music at California State University, Northridge
