Author: Albert Nalbandian

BARCELONAPianist Laura Farré Rozada (Vilanova i la Geltrú) speaks to ARA by phone from the United States. She is currently on tour presenting her album. Araspel (2025), an emotionally overwhelming album dedicated to Armenian music. It doesn’t abandon the French influence of previous albums, The French reverie (2018) and Nimbus (2021), because it knowledgeably connects Debussy and Komitas, the pioneer of Armenian ethnomusicology.

Where does your interest in Armenia’s musical heritage come from?

— It hasn’t been an obvious process, let’s say. About ten years ago, when I was still studying at Esmuc, I came across Komitas’s music, which was very different from the music I had studied or been made to study at the conservatory. It really caught my attention, and I thought there must surely be a significant musical tradition in Armenia, a country whose classical music we didn’t study. Aram Khatxaturian and Arno Babadjanian are the two well-known figures, but beyond that, I didn’t know much about Armenia.

And then you pull the thread of Komitas (1869-1935).

— Yes, and I got hooked: you lift a rock and out pop all these fantastic and completely unknown Armenian composers. I love discovering new repertoire and immersing myself in other cultures like this. Discovering composers is also important for the continuity of classical music. We can’t keep listening to the same pieces forever. Besides, as a pianist, discovering new music is incredibly enriching because it’s also a way to develop new skills and broaden my range as a performer. When you play different repertoire, you develop your technique, your listening skills, and your expressiveness. In parallel, I’ve been working on the other two albums and many other projects. Araspel It was a project that required time, and I needed to understand the country’s culture.

Have you traveled to Armenia?

— Yes, twice. It was a trip I kept postponing because I was a little scared, but the Nagorno-Karabakh war with Azerbaijan ended. Finally, I went during Holy Week. I was able to travel the entire country and speak with many musicologists and performers, and I finally put the pieces of the puzzle together because I understood how they were all connected and how important they had been to the country’s musical tradition. Then I returned in October, after the album had already been released, to launch the project. I gave three launch concerts, and I have two more scheduled for June at the Arno Babadjanian Concert Hall. Traveling to the country has allowed me to understand the music I play, its culture, and its history much better. It was when I returned from the first trip that I wrote the liner notes, because that’s when I truly understood the narrative I wanted to convey about all the composers and the significance of each one.

Komitas shares the context of musical nationalism in late 19th and early 20th century Europe, doesn’t it?

— Exactly. Komitas was a very important figure because he was one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology. He was a priest and knew the Armenian liturgy very well, and he made great contributions in this regard, but he also did a great deal of work traveling throughout the country before the genocide and transcribing folk songs. He has many compositions that are transcriptions of these melodies, and others that he created inspired by a certain folk aesthetic. In this, he was quite a pioneer, because Bartók did it somewhat later in Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia. Then he had the misfortune of suffering through the genocide, and in the last years of his life, he spent them in asylums because he was absolutely depressed by everything he had experienced. He is indeed a very important figure for Armenians because he was the first person to connect liturgical music with folk music. Furthermore, he studied in Berlin and had a Western scholastic education that he knew how to apply to create a national musical language.

Then there’s Alexander Spendaryan.

— Yes, Spendiaryan followed in Komitas’s footsteps. In the West, we’re accustomed to distinct historical periods: the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque, Romanticism… In Armenia, this isn’t the case. Until the 19th century, folk music and liturgical music in Armenia were separate. That’s why Komitas is so important, because he was the first to connect these two worlds. Later, Spendiaryan gave them a symphonic language and wrote operas, which is why the Yerevan Opera House is named after him. There’s also a very important institution for Armenian music, the Yerevan State Conservatory, which was founded precisely at the beginning of the Soviet Union and contributed to the country’s cultural reconstruction after the genocide. Many composers who had been in exile returned with the conservatory’s founding. This is where the foundations laid by Komitas truly took shape, and a great classical musical tradition was created.

Is there much difference between works composed in Armenia and those created in exile?

— This is an interesting topic. On the album, the first half features works by composers who lived in Armenia or in the Soviet Union’s satellite states. Then, starting with the work of Ofer Ben-Amots, I move to the United States to discuss the diaspora. In the case of diaspora composers, there’s a nostalgic element that I don’t find in the original Armenian composers. For example, Alan Hovhaness, half Scottish, half American, half Armenian, felt the need to return to Armenia and understand its folklore. There is a difference, because these are people who have spent a lot of time in the West and haven’t been as influenced by Armenia’s Eastern culture. I’ve also noticed that Armenian music is very different from that of neighboring countries like Georgia. If you attend an Armenian mass, the type of intervals they use is very similar to that of Armenian classical music, with many augmented seconds and these more Eastern-style scales. And it’s quite unique to them. I did research in neighboring countries, and they have nothing to do with each other.

And what about in other neighboring countries with a Muslim tradition?

— Perhaps with Turkey, because of the proximity. They share some instruments, but the folklore is quite different. Like Bulgaria, which is a country that could be considered quite similar because of the types of rhythms they use. Armenian music has a sensitivity that deeply moves me. And I think that on the album I’ve managed to convey that melodic and timbral richness.

Armenians also say that the sensitivity of the poet Sayat-Novà is unique.

— It’s an ancient civilization. They’ve been invaded by everyone throughout the centuries, and they’ve also been enriched by other cultures. Is Armenian music pure? No, it’s the result of many centuries of cultural mixing. But in the music of neighboring countries, I haven’t found anything that moves me as much as Armenian music. It’s a country that isn’t going through its best moment, and they’re trying to find what makes them unique, to feel that they are important and that they must continue to exist. Part of the goal of this album is to bring them to light and for people to become aware of the genocide; to be aware that we have this musical heritage, so much of which is still unrecorded. I’m preparing the next album, and I have a lot of scores that haven’t even been recorded. It’s music that should be much more present in concert halls.

Tell me the story of Ofer Ben-Amots’ piece: The butterfly effect. Laura Farré Rozada’s tone.?

— I toured the United States in 2019, right before the pandemic. I had already worked with Ofer. We’ve been collaborating on different projects for ten years. At that time, I was just starting out. the doctorate on connecting music and mathematics in the field of musical memoryAnd it suited me very well to have a commissioned work that would test my memory and be based on mathematics. For its creation, he drew inspiration from the Fibonacci sequence, chaos theory, and the butterfly effect. And I’ve used it for my doctoral thesis and in the context of the album, because the butterfly effect is the metaphor that a butterfly flapping its wings at one end of the world creates a catastrophe at the other. He wrote it in the context of the pandemic that began in China and then spread everywhere, but it also helped me explain the phenomenon of genocide, which led to many people going into exile and generating a diaspora with cultural ramifications. It’s the work I use as a turning point on the album.

Have you ever thought about creating your own compositions inspired by this type of repertoire? Or is your performance already a form of composition?

— I suppose I will do it someday, but right now I’m very focused on performing and I like to act as a conduit between these scores and the audience. Performance is indeed a form of composition, in a way: even if you follow the guidelines in the score, you always add your own personal touch. For me, each album is also like a form of composition because there’s a very defined narrative; it’s not just a collection of pieces, but I pay close attention to how I link them because my goal is for the album itself to be a single work, so that when you listen to it you don’t get the feeling you’re listening to twenty pieces, but rather a single piece that evolves.

You mentioned earlier that the next project would also follow the Armenian path.

— Yes, I’d especially like to focus on Gayane Chebotarian (1918-1998), a composer who has been one of the great discoveries of this album. She was a great musicologist, pianist, and composer, and a close collaborator of Aram Khatxaturian, yet she’s very little known, which really frustrates me because she’s an extraordinary talent. I’d love to record a lot of her music that hasn’t been recorded yet. All these years I’ve been researching, I’ve been collecting a huge amount of her music, and for Araspel I’ve had to focus on a repertoire that fit on the album.

Although she is the one most represented on the album.

— Yes, I’ve included four of his preludes, but he has much more music, very profound music, that deeply moves me. The problem is that it hasn’t been recorded. I’d like to give it a second wind, to make it known and delve deeper into his music.

Where do you find this fascination with Armenian music? In the harmonies?

— Expressively, it’s the music I’ve played that moves me the most. Obviously, it’s music I haven’t listened to as much, and I suppose if I’d been born listening to it, I might not have this fascination. But it has a quality that captivates me, something I can’t quite put my finger on. Simply put, it’s music I’ve connected with.