Artunian Trumpet Concerto

[Kristen]

I have recently begun studying the Artunian Concerto and I am really interested in learning about the history behind the music. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I could look?

Thanks!

[trumpetmike]

Searched through some wonderful music dictionaries and found this online. Hope it is of some use. If you can get yourself a copy of Timofei Dokschizer's recording of this piece (ITG Russian Treasures is a good one) there is more information on the sleeve notes.
It is also a fantastic recording, worth getting hold of a copy anyway.

Arutiunian, Aleksandr Grigori
(b Yerevan, 23 Sept 1920). Armenian composer and pianist. At the Komitas Conservatory in Yerevan he studied composition (with Barkhudaryan and Tal'yan) and the piano (with O. Babasyan), graduating in 1941. He continued his studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Litinsky, Peyko and Zuckermann (1946–. He was artistic director of the Armenian Philharmonic Society between 1954 and 1990. He began to teach composition at the Yerevan Conservatory in 1965, and was appointed to a professorship in 1977. He joined the Union of Composers in 1939 and the Union of Cinematographers of Armenia in 1975. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1949 for his graduation work Kautat hayreinki masin (‘Cantata on the Homeland’), and was made a People’s Artist of Armenia in 1960. Since then he has received numerous awards in Armenia, the USA and elsewhere.

The development in the late 1940s of Arutiunian’s artistic perception, with its dualism between Classical and Romantic elements, coincided with the development of vitalist trends in Soviet art of the postwar period. Arutiunian’s individual response to vitalism involved a spontaneous and improvisatory approach which drew on Armenia’s cultural heritage, revealing the immanent potential of the national melodic style and the energy of its rhythms. Elements of vitalism also conditioned other aspects of Arutunian’s music: his preservation of Classical sequences of contrasting movements and his use of Baroque forms and genres, especially suites and concertos. The concertante principle influences not only his concertos and other orchestral and chamber works, but also the opera Sayat-Nova (1967), in which the ashug, an 18th-century Armenian minstrel comparable to the Western Meistersinger, is made to symbolize the originality of the national poet-musician. The ashug tradition, based on freely varied development, has been important to Arutiunian’s work in general. His lyrical idiom is rooted in a specific national melodic character, while the Romantic side of his sensibility finds expression in an emotional radicalism and a predominantly lyrical impulse, producing music that is at once expressive, sentimental, nostalgic and ironic.

Although Arutiunian’s style has evolved smoothly and continuously, distinct periods are discernible in his music. The works of the 1940s and 50s are characterized by thematic development and the sequential combination of large structures which creates a high degree of emotional intensity. These works, including the Festive Overture, the Symphony and the Piano Concertino, continue the tradition of Khachaturian in their combination of a highly colourful, decorative style with a tragic sense of pathos. The 1960s and 70s saw an abandonment of dramatic elements in favour of diatonic clarity and an orientation towards Classical forms. Alongside Sayat-Nova, his major achievement of this period, are a number of works written in the neo-classical style, such as the sinfoniettas, the Horn Concerto and the Variations for trumpet and orchestra. Stylistic synthesis characterizes his works of the 1980s and 90s, such as the concertos for trombone and tuba (like the earlier Horn Concerto the first Armenian concertos for their respective instruments), and the Violin Concerto ‘Armenia – 88’, considered by many his masterpiece, in which a rhetorical Baroque style, Classical form and a Romantic harmonic palette are employed in balanced combination. A number of Arutiunian’s works for wind, notably the concertos for trumpet (1950) and tuba and the brass quintet Armenian Scenes (1984), have entered the international repertory.

[Kristen]

Great! Thanks very much. It's always easier to learn the style of a piece once you know something about the composer.

Kristen

[trumpetmike]

Couldn't agree more - glad to be of some help

[Kevin Good]

There are a few stylistic "differences" between what the Voisin (International) edition show you and what Dokshitzer actually plays. I am inclined to listen to the old Melodia recording and copy that, rather than what a publisher has set to paper.

You won't find a better recording, in terms of capturing Armenian passion, than this one. You might not agree with his vibrato, but that's a personal matter and there's NO question that it really works for him.

KG

[hazmat]

In the case of his vibrato. It has been brought to my attention recently that the piece was meant to have a slight Spanish sound to it which could account for Dokshizer's use of vibrato. I am also currently working on the piece.