Vartabed Komitas (1869-1935)
   Chinar Es (You are like a Plane Tree)
   Tsirani Tsar (Apricot Tree)
   Al Ailux (My Scarlet Handkerchief)
   Krunk (The Crane)

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor
   Prologue: Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto
   Sérénade: Modérément animé
   Final: Animé, léger et nerveux

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
Suite Populaire Espagnol
   El Paño Moruno
   Asturiana
   Jota
   Nana
   Canción
   Polo

Intermission

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in E minor, Op. 38
   Allegro non troppo
   Allegretto quasi Menuetto - Trio
   Allegro

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Variations on One String on a Theme by Rossini ("Moses")

The Aznavoorian Sisters appear by arrangement with Lisa Sapinkopf Artists, www.chambermuse.com

Ani Aznavoorian, Cello ~ Marta Aznavoorian, Piano

The Aznavoorian Sisters' first public performance was at the ages of 4 and 8 at their Armenian church in Evanston, IL. They won First Prize in the Illinois Bell Young Performers Competition, resulting in a live performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on PBS.

Since then, they have toured France, Armenia, and Finland, performed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and presented countless programs in their hometown of Chicago including a major fundraiser for the Armenian earthquake in 1988. They gave a residency at the Seattle Chamber Music Society, and highlights of their '24-25 season includes performances at the prestigious Ravinia Festival; tours of the West Coast from La Jolla, CA to Washington State; and concerts across the USA including Colorado and Oklahoma.

The Aznavoorian Sisters won the National Foundation for the Arts Award, leading to their appointment as Presidential Scholars in the Arts and performances at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and at The White House, where Ani met President Bill Clinton and Marta met President George H. W. Bush. 

They have worked with leading contemporary composers such as Lera Aerbach, Ezra Laderman, William Bolcom, Osvaldo Golijov, Shulamit Ran, Peter Boyer, Augusta Read Thomas, Stacy Garrop, Bright Sheng, Pierre Jalbert, Laura Schwendinger, Mischa Zupko, Daron Hagen, Patrick Zimmerli, Vache Sharafyan, Debra Kaye, and Colin Mathews among others.

In 2022, the Aznavoorian Sisters released their début album, Gems from Armenia, on the Cedille Label. The CD features Armenian music and a world premiere recording written for the duo by composer Peter Boyer and Vache Sharafyan. The CD has been receiving rave reviews in the press.

Marta and Ani work with many programs to help create musical training pathways for students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds. They created the Keynote Foundation, which aims to fund these students and help them achieve their full musical potential. 

The Aznavoorian Sisters were honored to be selected to showcase at the Chamber Music America 2023 Conference.

Website: www.martaaznavoorian.com/the-aznavoorian-sisters

YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI3xjCqlNzs&list=PLcv-O4gbpIKp-raFxTK8_9S33f-kQeb1Q

#4 on List of Top 10 Most Coveted Releases of 2022 —www.yourclassical.org
“True artists showing great sensitivity and great virtuosity at all moments.” 
—Los Angeles Times

“Ani and Marta perform seamlessly with an innate understanding of the style and sentiment.”
—Stringendo (Australia)

“Superb playing . . . expressive, technically poised and well blended throughout.”
—ChicagoClassicalReview.com

"A lively and lovely program." —Classical Modern Music Review

“Amazing talent . . . showed how tight an ensemble composed of family members can be.”
—Third Coast Review 

“Their combined talent is nothing short of stunning.” —https://takeeffectreviews.com 

“The most rapturously poignant album of the year.” —New York Music Daily 

“Strong playing by the Aznavoorians bringing sweeping urgency to the music . . . highly recommended.” —www.theclassicalreview.com

Komitas Vartabed: 

Originally a people who worshipped the sun before they adopted Christianity in 301 AD, the Armenians have a storied history of tragedy and periods of triumph reflected in the breadth of their music, as divergent as their agrarian roots and the thriving urban centers in which they’ve earned renown and respect as people of learned accomplishment and sharp mercantile acumen.

A defining quality of the Armenian people is their bridging of cultures, as the largest Christian minority in the Middle East; one of their largest population centers, modern-day Istanbul, has one foot in Europe and the other in Asia.

The revered composer Komitas Vartabed (often just called Komitas) was an Armenian Orthodox priest who applied his advanced education in Western classical music to notating and arranging ancient Armenian folk songs. Komitas strove not merely to capture melodic tunes, but to evoke the very life and heartache of the people who passed down poetic lyrics in song over centuries as he documented them for the ages. He is known primarily for introducing lush modern harmonies to a traditionally melodic art form, incorporating independent harmonic voices built on the traditional modal form of Armenian music. Chinar Es tells of a far-away lover personified as a tall plane tree, Tsirani Tsar speaks of an apricot tree that bears no harvest, Al Ailux of a girl’s stolen veil, and Krunk is the crane that personifies the longing for home of every Armenian refugee from the Ottoman Genocide of 1915-1922.

Manuel de Falla: 
Andalusian and cosmopolitan, the greatest Spanish composer of the 20th century, Manuel de Falla was born in Cadiz and studied in Madrid with Pedrell, the founder of the Spanish nationalist school. Before making his reputation in Paris, de Falla’s life was not easy. He settled in Granada in 1920, departing for Argentina in 1939, where he died in 1946. But following his encounter with Diaghilev, the director of the famous Russian Ballet, and the compositions commissioned by him, Manuel de Falla quickly became an internationally admired composer. 

He was a friend of Dukas and Ravel, and one of Debussy’s and Stravinsky’s partisans; he was a self-effacing, delightfully courteous man, dedicated entirely to his art, and a friend of Turina and García Lorca, with whom he organized the legendary “Cante Jondo Competition” in Granada. Together with Lorca he went to listen to the peasants, who brought to his attention forgotten dances and songs; a striking friendship developed between the middle-aged composer, rather hesitant, with a tendency towards mysticism, and the young, extravert poet, who resolutely proclaimed his progressive ideas and his own homosexuality to a society not yet ready to accept them.

De Falla could be considered a neoclassical composer, with his great sense of transparency, and Haydn and Scarlatti as his preferred models.

The lyrics of the original folksongs are:

Debussy:
Although they represent only half of a projected series of works, Debussy's three chamber sonatas bear testimony to the composer's developing identification with more abstract—that is, less visually, textually, or otherwise extramusically oriented—music. The first of these works, the Sonata No.1 for Cello and Piano (1915), is cast in three movements, the last two of which are played without break. The Prologue opens with a noble keyboard statement in D minor, well defined harmonically (an unusual feature in Debussy's music) and tinged with modal color, to which the cello provides a highly ornamental response. The entire movement is but 51 measures in length, yet encompasses a wealth of expression. Throughout, musical phrases are allowed to develop and collapse with no clear boundaries; as with much of the composer's later music, the distinction between melody and ornamentation is deliberately obscured. 

The cellist's percussive pizzicati in the ensuing Sérénade came as a great shock to Parisian audiences of Debussy's time. The few bowed passages that invade the texture quickly dissolve away, save for an outburst of triplet rhythms midway through the movement. The bass staccati in the piano serve to make the occasional melodic, legato inserts all the more powerful. The finale, marked Animé, follows without pause. At 123 bars, it is longer than the two previous movements combined. Although in performance its quicker tempo compensates for its proportions to some degree, a great deal of the Sonata's musical weight is invested in this energetic movement. Debussy calls for the cello to play with a "light and nervous" character, while he includes no fewer than 17 tempo indications that emphasize the psychological tension. The music builds to several climaxes, only to have the bottom drop out each time, in one of Debussy's favorite musical strategies. The cello makes a final passionate, unaccompanied melodic plea, as at the beginning of the entire work, before the Sonata concludes in a flurry of great percussive strength. ~Adapted from a note by Blair Johnston

Brahms:
Sonata No.1 begins with an expansive sonata form first movement. The quiet and expressive first theme in the cello is supported by a simple chordal piano accompaniment. The forte second theme is built of an arpeggiated chord. This exposition section closes softly. Motives from both themes are explored in the development section. The recapitulation brings a return of the two principal themes in minor, and the coda concludes in major.  

The Allegretto quasi Menuetto is in typical minuet form. A stately dance in the minor mode is followed by several variants. This section ends with pizzicatos in the cello. A contrasting trio possesses some qualities of music by Robert Schumann, Brahms's mentor.  The minuet music returns exactly as before.

 Brahms' finale is a fugue marked Allegro. The piano introduces the subject in the bass register. This is answered first in the cello and then in the treble register of the piano. Melodic similarities between this fugue subject and one composed by Bach in his Art of Fugue have been noticed by several scholars. This subject is developed by means of several fugal techniques, including inversion and stretto (close imitation of the fugue subject).  —Antoine Lederlin

Paganini: 
Niccolò Paganini was the most celebrated virtuoso of the violin of the nineteenth century, if not the entirety of classical music. His works represent a great leap forward for violin technique, showing with glittering pyrotechnics the wide range of capability of the instrument and the modern violinist. He kept his secrets closely guarded and engaged in friendly rivalries with other virtuosos of his time, like Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst.

In the same way that we might consider Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” to be the ultimate manifestation of “Frenchness” in music, these “Moses” variations by Paganini (on a theme by Rossini) could be considered the equivalent for Italian style. Starting with a beautiful bel canto operatic melody, the subsequent variations waste no time in becoming playful and theatrical in a charming, light-hearted, operatic (opera buffa), quintessentially “Italian” way. The mixture of Rossini and Paganini is a delightful recipe indeed and the ending is a real show-stopper, perfectly designed to bring an audience to its feet.

Paganini was known for his dramatic theatricality as well as his virtuosity. A favorite trick of his was to break the top three strings of his violin during a concert, leaving only the G—then he would play an encore on the remaining string, of which his "Variations on the G String on Rossini's 'Moses'" (referring to the operatic master's "Moses in Egypt'') was the most famous. The original title for this piece includes the term “Variazioni di Bravura,” which captures its spectacular, extroverted character. Whether in its original version for violin, or in this version for cello, it remains one of his most popular and dazzling showpieces.