Tchaikovsky Gold Medal Winner Cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan plays at the Hollywood Bowl
August 7, 2015
Cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan
BY SIMON J. SIMONIAN
On July 9, 2015 Mr. Narek Hakhnazaryan, who was awarded a Gold Medal at the 2011 XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition, the most prestigious Prize given to a cellist, played Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, Tchaikovsky’s complex cello composition, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra with Lionel Bringuier, Conductor, at the Hollywood Bowl. The piece is difficult and without a break for 20 minutes. His playing was outstanding and brought the audience to its feet. Next, Mr. Hakhnazaryan announced that this year marks the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Los Angeles has a large Armenian community. To commemorate the event he is going to play Lamentations, a suite composed by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson based on a Black Folk song for solo cello, expressing a people’s crying out. He played and sang simultaneously, something we have never seen a cellist do before, expressing his intense agony for about ten minutes. Again he received standing ovations.
The New York Times has said that “Mr. Hakhnazaryan projected intensity from the moment he took the stage. To the very end his intense focus and expressive artistry never flagged.”
