‘Sergey Khachatryan Trio’

For this concert, the Henry Le Bœuf Great Hall will be bathed in an Armenian atmosphere. All three artists on stage, Sergey Khachatryan - in the spotlight this season with a ‘Portrait’ - sister Lusine and cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan are from Jerevan and are ambassadors for Armenian music.
The Sergey Khachatryan Trio gives you the chance to familiarise yourself with the work of Arno Babajanian, and more specifically with his Piano trio in F-sharp minor, the Armenian composer’s best known and most successful work. Babajanian took a great deal of inspiration from Armenian folklore, whilst at the same time transcending it. The trio performs in a late Romantic style and is indebted to its Babajanian model, Aram Chatsjatoerjan, and Sergey Rachmanioff.
It is therefore no coincidence that it appears last on the programme. In his youthful First Piano Trio we find all the elements which went on to make his music so popular: grand gestures, a stirring melancholy and melodious lyricism.
These same elements also mark the slow part of Beethoven’s Trio, op. 70/1. The drama of this movement and its numerous changes in atmosphere explain the work’s nickname of 'ghost trio'.