Notes from history: musicians mark Armenia's darkest moment

Thousands queued in Yerevan on April 24 for a concert in the Armenian capital's Soviet-era opera house, after a last-minute change of venue from a drenched Republic Square. Before the rain, the presidents of France and Russia were among politicians who laid flowers at the Armenian Genocide Memorial at a hilltop complex with an eternal flame and a view of snow-capped Mount Ararat. The concert in the 1,200-seat venue, broadcast live on state television, commemorated the start of the genocide in 1915. The music not only mourned the dead but exulted in the culture that survived.

For the Armenian violinist and conductor Sergey Smbatyan, 27, who conceived the concert two years ago, it was "confirmation that we're still here and are successful. We lost the land and 1.5m people" - the number historians estimate were killed in 1915-18 under Ottoman rule, or died on forced marches, or in concentration camps. The day after the concert, Smbatyan says: "We played the music of Armenian composers in the past 100 years, to show the treasure and value of the nation whose soul they - the decision makers - tried to destroy."

"Music was always one of our nation's strengths," says concert violinist Sergey Khachatryan, 30. "For a small country [of 3m], we have a lot of musicians and amazingly beautiful folkloric music."

The folk music's unusual rhythms and ancient instruments such as the duduk, a double-reeded pipe made from apricot wood, were adapted for symphony orchestras after Russia's 19th-century conquest of the Caucasus. Wherever he is, Khachatryan plays this music for an encore, and will release a dedicated CD with his pianist sister, Lusine, this year. Their paternal great-grandfather from Kars, in eastern Turkey, was one of only two brothers to survive the genocide out of nine siblings.

"Even for those not directly involved, it's a kind of wound inside ourselves," Khachatryan tells me, between rehearsals. "We Armenians should always remember. But it's not only our darkest moment; it's a tragedy in world history. Not only Turkey, but other countries need to take responsibility."

Khachatryan, who lives in Frankfurt, returned to the city of his birth on the heels of another centennial concert in Toronto, initiated by Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyan. The Yerevan concert is one of many planned around the world this year, aiming to use the arts to raise awareness and official recognition of the genocide. The country's pavilion at the Venice biennale is devoted to artists from the diaspora. As Khachatryan says: "The one thing keeping us together was, and is, culture."

As Hasmik Poghosyan, Armenia's culture minister, tells me at the rehearsals: "We want to present the culture that existed before, and a cultural renaissance that came after." The minister, who says her grandfather witnessed the killings in Sasun, believes many artists have been spurred by this painful history. "It's difficult to think of a famous Armenian who hasn't been touched by it. It comes naturally, from the heart."

April 24 1915 was when 235 blacklisted Armenian intellectuals were rounded up in Constantinople. They included Komitas, the priest-musicologist who inspired Armenia's greatest composer, Aram Khachaturian - and is the subject of a new museum that opened in Yerevan in January. "We have a really strong school of composers," Smbatyan says. The repertoire included work by Avet Terterian, Alexander Arutiunian and Arno Babajanian, whose elongated figure plays a bronze grand piano outside the opera house.

The two-and-a-half-hour concert was played nonstop, with precision and passion, aided by a relay of four conductors - including Michail Jurowski, who knew Khachaturian as a child in Moscow - and the 24/04 World Orchestra. Wearing purple forget-me-not scarves and ties, the orchestra was assembled for the centenary by Smbatyan and Gianluca Marciano, an Italian pianist who was until February principal conductor of the Tbilisi State Opera in Georgia. It features 123 musicians from 43 countries and 47 orchestras, ranging in age from 20 to 62. The 22 local musicians are mainly drawn from Smbatyan's State Youth Orchestra of Armenia, founded almost 10 years ago. A further 19 hail from the diaspora, from Russia to Mexico. "There could have been even more," says Marciano. "We got many calls from musicians asking to join."

This is the "project of my life", Smbatyan says in his office at the Komitas Conservatory of Music. His paternal grandfather escaped with his mother and two brothers from Van in eastern Turkey. "I even know the exact address. He used to repeat it till the last days of his life."

Most orchestra members were new to such works as the lyric poem Shushanik by Edward Mirzoyan, a composer born in Georgia shortly after the genocide. "I can't believe the pain in the score," Smbatyan says. "But professionals can read the music and understand it without biography. As a conductor, I believe in fewer words and more technique."

Khachatryan played two movements of the 1940 Khachaturian Violin Concerto he will perform with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London on Sunday. The composer, who divided his time between Moscow and Soviet Yerevan, "reinterpreted so much Armenian folk music in the concerto", he says. "He wrote the second movement for a tragic movie about the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. But the tragedy comes straight from the Armenian soul."

Such sentiments are echoed by the Yerevan-born cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan, 26, who grew up in Moscow and was the first Armenian to win the Tchaikovsky Competition. "You can feel the depth of it in all our composers." He played the Khachaturian Concerto-Rhapsody in Yerevan, and will record it with a BBC orchestra this year. He has dedicated all this year's performances to 1915, as the commemoration is "very personal for me, and for 90 per cent of Armenians", he says. "My great-grandfather's whole family was burnt alive: his parents, sisters, brothers." His great-grandfather, then aged seven or eight, "was the only one to survive because he was out of the house. He came back and found them in the ovens Armenians use to make bread."

Such personal histories are made more painful by a denial that persists in the face of meticulous documentation. Neither the US nor Britain officially recognise an Armenian genocide. The day after the concert, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey again dismissed "claims constructed on Armenian lies". Concerts in the name of peace can seem flimsy in the face of such realpolitik. Yet, urging the audience to "remember and demand", this concert included a screen backdrop of photomontage and film footage. The effect, combined with the symphony orchestra, was profoundly moving. Scenes ranged from family portraits of pre-1915 western Armenia, through horrific images of execution, torture and starvation, to philanthropic orphanages and a kaleidoscopic Armenian renaissance.

Some Armenians "hold on to this history, maybe too much", Hakhnazaryan says. "My family was more pragmatic: always think of the future. But we remember."

Music For Armenia, Royal Festival Hall, London, May 3, southbankcentre.co.uk

Armenian Centenary Concert, Wigmore Hall, London, July 12, wigmore-hall.org.uk

Main photograph: Getty Images

Photographs: Bridgeman Art Library; Samvel Manvelyan

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