The Mediator between Armenian and Belgian Music: Interview with Pianist Laurence-Anahit Mekhitarian

My parents were very involved during the 1980s and later with the Armenian newcomers from Turkey and Armenia. They never imposed on us to be in concrete action in Armenian activities, but we knew about their actions in social life for Armenian newcomers. There is still a social center with the name of my father (“Centre social Arménien Arpag Mekhitarian”). The last thing is also that I began to practice the piano, and my father received the works of Armenian musicians. I have everything and step by step I learned some of the music of Komitas and other Armenian composers.

The music fans of Yerevan had the opportunity to listen your piano recitals twice. You prefer playing avant-garde pieces, often with nontraditional interpretations (for instance, playing on piano strings, singing or using multimedia). Do you think that over time piano playing should experience some changes?

I think we need, and it is our duty as musicians, to be open to the new ways the composers offer us. But it is not why we have to deny the past. I love Bach, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, Debussy… and many other composers. But the living music of today is the music composed today, and there is still a gap between that music and the audience. Music creation is always in evolution, changing, offering new ideas of playing our instrument, how to use new technology. It will never stop and it is really fascinating to listen to the always new possibilities created by the composers. That’s not why I appreciate all new music but as a professional I feel this interest, curiosity and the duty, as I said before, to be of service to the today’s composers. And I can say more: it is a real chance to be in contact with them because it is the real lively music and they can explain what they wish, what they mean, and what they have the urgency to say in their works.

I taught the piano for many years and the most important thing for me was really the personal expression and wellbeing of my students with the music they played. In that way, meeting the Hungarian composer György Kurtàg through his Jàtekok collection was for me a great experience, not only as he is a lively contemporary composer but as a possibility to know what is essential in playing music. Of course we need a technical knowledge of our instrument and of music theory, but the most important thing is to know the sense, the deep meaning of the sounds we are listening to and we are playing. In that way Kurtàg offered us a lot of possibilities to explore and to test what musical meaning we can apply to every music and every composer throughout the ages and different countries. Music is our internal experience of life. The sound we produce has to be inhabited by the depth of our inner search.

You are among those rare musicians of the Armenian diaspora, or rather, world musicians of Armenian origin, who keeps under the spotlight the oeuvre of contemporary Armenian composers. Do you think they can have a certain place in contemporary piano music scene?

My knowledge of contemporary Armenian composers begun only few years ago. For many years I was interested in Belgium in contemporary musical compositions, but not especially in Armenian composers. In 2015 I wanted to play a program with the young generation of Armenian composers and I had the chance to receive scores from some of them (Vache Sharafyan, Arthur Avanesov, Arthur Akhshelyan, Aram Hohannissyan, Davit Balasanyan). In the same period, I asked Belgian composers to write new piano music, in their style of course, but in the spirit of Armenia.