Student Recital Program: "Range" by Azniv Khaligian

carthage music department presents

Range A Junior Recital featuring Azniv Khaligian, Violin with guest artist Yuhan Xue, Piano

Tuesday, March 2, 2021 | 6:30 p.m. | Recital Hall

program There is no intermission Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 1 in D major, Op. 12, No. 1 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

I. Allegro con brio

II. Tema con variazioni: Andante con moto

III. Rondo: Allegro Song-Poem “In Honor of the Ashughs” Partita for Violin No. 2 in D minor

I. Allemande IV. Gigue

Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Zigeunerweisen

Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908)

I. Moderato II. Lento

III. Un peu plus lento (Csak egy szép lány van a világon “There is

only one beautiful girl in the world” by Elemér Szentirmay)

IV. Allegro molto vivace

performer biography Azniv Khaligian is an American violinist of Armenian heritage based in the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor. She studies Music and Neuroscience at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI, where she is a member of Mr. Andrew Williams’s violin studio and enjoys performing with the Carthage Philharmonic and the President’s String Quartet. Apart from playing music, Azniv keeps busy on campus conducting bioacoustics and behavioral research with white-handed gibbons, along with walking to and from Straz Science Center and Johnson Arts Center for her many and varied classes. Her musical studies and performance opportunities have taken her domestically and abroad to cities including Vienna, Munich, and Yerevan, where she has studied with great artists like Nancy and Stanley Nosal, Bagrad Vardanyan, and Jörg Bierhance. Azniv draws musical inspiration from a desire to serve, a commitment to seeking and sharing beauty, and the scientifically proven power of music on the human brain.

program notes Sonata for Piano and Violin No. 1 in D major, Op. 12, No. 1

The turn of the 19th century saw a shift in the way music was consumed as it became more inclusive to the bourgeois in society life rather than being a private aristocratic privilege. To adapt to performances in larger halls and public spaces, instruments themselves underwent modernization to increase projection and withstand the greater force and tension required to produce the sound. Prior to Beethoven, chamber music for strings and piano was mainly written for piano solo with string accompaniment. With the modern instruments and rise of violin virtuosos it became possible for an equal pairing, which is demonstrated in this piece.

Beethoven’s set of three Opus 12 Sonatas for Piano and Violin were written from 1797-1798 and dedicated to his mentor, Antonio Salieri. While still in his “early” period in Vienna he wrote within and tested the limits of the Classical genre, which observed strict forms for recreational listening, such as the sonata-allegro, variations, and rondo structure upon which the D major sonata was built. The first movement begins in unison and is followed by a humorous but masterful dialogue, development and recapitulation. In the second, the variations on a lyrical theme belong first to the piano and then to the violin, with the other accompanying, before coming together in a stormy minor variation and resolving with gentle major. The sonata closes with a rolling and vibrant rondo, filled with trademark Beethoven sforzandos on odd beats and two false endings. Enjoy the sounds of the modern violin and piano in the music which they were designed for.

Song-Poem “In Honor of the Ashughs”

Armenian composer Aram Khatchaturian was born in 1903 in Tiflis, Georgia. His first formal music training began with a cello class, while he simultaneously pursued a biology degree from Moscow State University.

Khachaturian wrote Song-Poem in 1929 during his first years at Moscow International Conservatory. The piece was inspired by a meeting with a family ashugh ensemble, during Khachaturian’s early composition period which focused on modeling and arranging folk songs and dances. Ashughs were the modern equivalents of the medieval Armenian gusan bards. The subject matter of their art was primarily social issues such as sorrow and longing, resulting from the Armenians’ history of persecution under various empires, but also love. The ashugh music he heard included the sounds of kamancha, saz, kanun, and various types of flutes, with characteristic Armenian ornaments, rhythmic patterns, and repetitions which can be heard in both the piano and violin obligato with their striking yet dissonant harmonies. Hence, the title, Song-Poem is appropriate in naming Khatchaturian’s interpretation of an ashugh storytelling.

program notes Partita for Violin No. 2 in D minor

In the Baroque period during which Bach composed in Germany, the most secure way for a musician to make a living was to be employed by a church or royal court. In fact, most of Bach’s works were created to fulfill the wishes of his present employer, which is why many of his pieces were sacred settings of church hymns.

During Bach’s tenure at Cöthen from 1717-1723, he served the Prince Leopold who was a musician himself and demonstrated a great appreciation for Bach’s talent through a generous salary and more creative freedom than previously granted, particularly since Leopold’s Calvinist worship services did not use elaborate music.

It was in this context that Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin were born, dated 1720. Each Partita, or Suite, follows a contrasting sequence of four stylized dances being allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue designed for courtly listening.

Yet the D minor Partita No. 2 is somehow wistful and intimate, though always in a dancing spirit, with its continual rhythmic steps and complex layered harmonies produced by a single melodic voice.

Zigeunerweisen

Pablo de Sarasate was a touring violinist and composer of Spanish nationality. Although concert-goers of the time raved about his renditions of the major Romantic concertos, his own compositions by which he is remembered today were show-pieces created as a display of virtuosity, many with influences of Spanish style. Zigeunerweisen was written for violin and piano in 1878 after Sarasate visited Budapest, where he experienced the music of the Roma people. The Roma are Europe’s largest ethnic minority and have faced severe persecution prolonged by racist stereotyping and the lack of a national homeland. Many attempts to assimilate them failed, so their distinct culture, language, and identity survives today. Thus inspired by the improvisatory style, extended techniques, organic emotion, and prowess on the violin, Sarasate emulated their sounds and titled it “Roma Airs,” meaning, the way of the Roma.

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