On July 10, the record company Delos will release the barn Komitas: Divine Liturgy, a masterpiece written by the outstanding Armenian composer Komitas Vardapet in the early 20th century for the mixed choir. In this new interpretation, the Latvian Radio Choir with conductor and artistic director Sigvards Kļavas at the conductor’s desk and soloists – bass Hovhannes Nersesyan and tenor Armen Badalyan can be heard, the media representatives of the Latvian Radio Choir informed the media.
Recorded at Riga St. St. John’s Church 20-23. in September.
Representatives of the Latvian Radio Choir emphasize that the importance of Komitas Vardapet’s music in the context of Armenian identity cannot be exaggerated. “Music is a memory for Armenians,” writes Michael Church to The Guardian. “And every time they come together in memory of their dead, on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the 1915 Genocide Memorial Day, commemorating the 1.5 million Armenians who were executed or died in forced exile in Turkey. The songs they sing were written by Komitas Vardapets, a composer who embodies the soul of the nation. ”
As a pastor and well-known ethnomusicologist, the commission itself fell victim to the 1915 Mets Yeghern (Great Doom). Although he survived, his psyche was shattered and he spent the last two decades of his life in exile at a psychiatric hospital in Paris.
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The committee began work on the Liturgy in 1892 and has at least ten versions. The last one, offered in the new record, was written in 1914-1915. and was completed just before the deportation of the composer from Constantinople, where he had lived since 1910, to the punishment camp of Kankiri. The liturgy is one of his last works.
The liturgy was originally written for a men’s choir, and previous attempts to convert it to a mixed choir performance have not been very warm.
But Tigran Mkrtchyan, the Ambassador of Armenia to the Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, believed that a new concert version would attract a larger audience to this masterpiece, helping to focus more on its musical aspect and dramatic structure than on its ritual role. Vače Sharfyan’s arrangement follows the original version of the men’s choir as close as possible, giving the women’s voices extra color and brightness.
The project took three years of preparation, and finally on September 20, 2019, celebrating the 150th birthday of the Committee, the Latvian Radio Choir under the direction of the artistic director Sigvards Kļava in a historical performance of Riga St. St. John’s Church became the first non-Armenian mixed choir to play the Comitas Liturgy. This recording was made within three days of the historical performance.
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