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When the Twain Did Meet By SAHAN ARZRUNI
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat...
—Rudyard Kipling, ("The Ballad of East and West") The world stood on a razor's edge of rebirth and annihilation: of soaring achievements of the human spirit, and grotesque violence against human dignity.
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| Aram Khachaturian at the podium. (Photo courtesy of www.karadar.it) |
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Such was the political and social scene of the 1940s, and the artistic currents of the day were no different. The Second World War period gave birth to nuclear power, computer technology and existentialist philosophy. The seeds of today's great advances—in medical treatment, industrial and agricultural production, transportation, and communications, for example—as well as our great global threats—pollution, overpopulation, famine, political disorder—were planted, side by side, in this period. Intellectuals and artists throughout the world saw ample reason for optimism as well as pessimism, and found the tension between these poles sharpened, in the years following the war.At such a fluid time—when old distinctions were being washed away, and new ones had not yet solidified—it is perhaps not so remarkable that the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves as allies, waging a global battle against fascist militarism. The tensions of the Cold War still lay in the future, and so there was room in the public sphere for geniality, cooperation, and even mutual respect, between the world's stalwart symbols of capitalism and communism.This was the environment in which American concert audiences received their introduction to the works of Soviet composers. The primary intermediary for the exchange was Eugene Weintraub, head of the Am-Rus Music Corporation, who arranged the first American performances of works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, and Myaskovsky, among others.Thumbing through the Am-Rus catalogue in 1942, Maro Ajemian, then a piano student at The Juilliard School of Music, happened upon a piano concerto by one Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978). Intrigued by the prospect of introducing New York audiences to a new work by a fellow Armenian, Miss Ajemian discussed the matter with her teacher, Carl Friedberg, who enthusiastically arranged to obtain the score from Mr. Weintraub for a student concert at Juilliard. (Weintraub was notorious for the fees he charged; the New Grove Dictionary of American Music cites the rental fee for the 1944 premiere of Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony as a whopping $10,000!)Ajemian premiered Khachaturian's Piano Concerto on March 14, 1942, as part of the Juilliard Graduate School's student concerto series. Albert Stoessel led The Juilliard School of Music orchestra in this vivid, iridescent, alluring new work. The same concert featured offerings by Chopin, Liszt, and Mozart, performed by Ajemian's fellow rising stars at Juilliard: Leonid Hambro, Mary Gorin, and Dorothy DeLay. But it was the Khachaturian Concerto that generated the most excitement. Writing in The New York Herald Tribune, Robert Lawrence observed: "Miss Ajemian played with such mastery that she lifted her performance completely out of the student category. She has an individual type of piano tone, rather wanting in roundness but pleasingly so. The quality of her work last night was pointed, precise, elegant, in addition to a substratum of fine poetic feeling. This is a young artist to be watched. Mr. Stoessel gave her admirable orchestral support."With such reviews, a reprise performance was inevitable, and took place two months later at New York's Cosmopolitan Opera House (now City Center on West 55th Street), organized by the local Armenian community as a benefit for Russian War Relief.
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| Maro Ajemian, c. the 1940s (Photo by Manugian) |
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The Cosmopolitan Opera House concert—now adding violinist Ruggiero Ricci, ballet dancer Leon Danielian, and theater director Benjamin Zemach to the winning combination of Ajemian and Stoessel—was received with even greater enthusiasm. The subheading of Louis Biancolli's New York World-Telegram review claimed, "Khachaturian May Displace Tschaikowsky"! Biancolli went on to observe: "On all points the concerto makes an immediate appeal. The material is fresh and exciting, deriving in part from Armenian folk motifs. Khachaturian works it into a throbbing symphonic scheme, hurtling repeatedly to gripping dramatic climaxes. The mixture of modern and exotic themes makes for sharp novelty … In Khachaturian's smoothly hybrid score Kipling's twain meet in snug amity."Of course, the story of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto did not end there. Present at the Juilliard concert was a fellow student, the young William Kapell, fresh from his victory at the Naumburg Competition and looking for a spectacular composition to launch his career. The concerto seemed to fit the bill. Efrem Kurtz, conductor of the New York Philharmonic's summer concerts, advised Kapell: "Learn it quickly, then we'll play it together." Kapell performed the concerto at Lewisohn Stadium on July 18, 1942, and became identified with it thereafter. A 1946 recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky is still available on BMG Classics.I am told that Artur Rubinstein had wanted to play the concerto after reading the initial reviews, but deferred to the younger Kapell at the urging of the latter's teacher, Olga Samaroff. Nevertheless, Rubinstein himself performed it at Carnegie Hall on December 12, 1943, under Artur Rodzinski. Later, Oscar Levant with Dmitri Mitropoulos would champion the piece, until it became part of the standard 20th-century concerto repertoire.For the sake of historical completeness, it should be noted that the world premiere of the concerto was performed on July 12, 1937, by Soviet pianist Lev Oborin, to whom Khachaturian dedicated the piece. The Western premiere was given by the British pianist Moura Lympany in 1941, with Anatole Fistoulari at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra. In her autobiography, Lympany explains that the concerto's manuscript was first offered to Clifford Curzon, who turned it down because of his many other commitments. "Give it to Moura," Curzon recommended; "she learns so quickly." After the Lympany performance, pianist Tobias Matthay wrote: "Best Concerto since Liszt." A 1945 version of Lympany playing the concerto is available on the Dutton label. The West's estimation of Khachaturian would later suffer, as American-Soviet relations became strained, and as the Cold War intensified. But 18 years after its American premiere, the concerto would once again symbolize the possibility of cooperation, and even friendship, between East and West. In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower announced his intention to meet with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The "summit conference" was expected to mark a thaw in the Cold War, and in a gesture resonant with symbolism, Maro Ajemian was invited to perform the Khachaturian Concerto under the baton of the composer himself, in a concert before the two world leaders.But the concert, and the dramatic opportunity it prefigured, never came to pass. Shortly before the conference, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia, raising suspicion and distrust on both sides. The Cold War reasserted itself—and the window of cooperation that had briefly welcomed the American debut of a Soviet composer's work in the 1940s slammed shut once more. East and West withdrew again to their respective corners.Maro Ajemian's historic premiere of the Khachaturian Piano Concerto is now available on compact disc, digitally remastered from the original acetate recording. (For information on obtaining a copy of the CD, inquiries may be addressed to presbel@earthlink.net.)As for the artist herself, Ajemian continued to seek out the new and experimental, championing the works of Cage, Hovhaness, Cowell, Krenek, Harrison, and Schuller. Like the compositions she brought to public notice, Ajemian was a composite of opposing themes—commanding gentleness, discreet lavishness, distinguished humility—brought into harmonious order by an incisive mind, and an unquenchable artistic passion. Her brilliant, all-too-brief career (she died in 1978, at the age of 58) still defines a period of rare, often audacious innovation in the music world.For the past year, Sahan Arzruni (M.S. '68, piano) has been representing the Republic of Armenia's Ministry of Culture as the official U.S. envoy of the Aram Khachaturian Centennial Committee.
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