Kirill Gerstein (Photo: Marco Borggreve)
Pianist Kirill Gerstein recently released Music in Time of War, a double album pairing works by Claude Debussy, the seminal French composer who wrote his last compositions during the First World War, and Komitas, the great Armenian composer and ethnomusicologist who survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and is revered as the founder of the Armenian national school of music.
These two historic calamities transpired more than a century ago, and their impacts remain. “The repercussions and the echoes of World War I and the Armenian Genocide are still with us as afterquakes and consequences,” reflects Gerstein. And yet, he says, “It’s not all doom and gloom. If you listen to the music, so much of the Debussy and Komitas is exuberant and not bleak.”
The art created in these times remains relevant, too. Gerstein observes that, “We, as members of society and also as artists, feel both the need to do something and the helplessness in not being able to influence something.”
Packaging for Music in Time of War
He says Music in Time of War took shape around the start of the pandemic, and that the project grew until it reached its final form: two CDs packaged in a beautiful hardcover book brimming with historical images and four commissioned essays. The album holds works for solo piano, and intimate collaborations with pianists Thomas Adès and Katia Skanavi, and Armenian soprano Ruzan Mantashyan.
Kirill Gerstein recently spoke with WFMT about this very special project.
WFMT: What inspired you to pull this all together – musically, but also writ large?
Claude Debussy
Kirill Gerstein: I always wanted to learn the 12 piano études of Debussy. It’s a monumental cycle and one of the pinnacles of his output. And I started to think, “What could I pair it with? What else was happening in the world?”
Debussy and Komitas had met in Paris in the early 1900s, and Debussy professed his admiration for Komitas’s music. Komitas notated more than 3,000 folk songs of the Armenian people. And here we come to the very important point – that Komitas suffered the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Though he physically survived, he was psychologically destroyed and did not manage to write another note of music. He spent the last decades of his life in a mental asylum in Paris.
At the same time, Debussy has this late burst of creativity during the First World War. He writes the piano études, the great piece for two pianos called En Blanc et Noir, and many small pieces that he contributes to the war relief efforts, and some songs.
Debussy did not have access to a piano in this village in Normandy where he escaped from wartime Paris with his family. He wrote the études and sent the ready manuscript to his publisher, Durand, without having tried these on the piano. Such a clarity of imagination is just mind boggling.
The piece for two pianos, En Blanc et Noir, is the most overt anti-war statement of Debussy. It really tries to express something about that war and that conflict. The piece is something that Thomas Adès and I have been playing for a number of years in concert. And Tom’s insight as a composer, not only as a pianist, makes the interpretation quite special.
Finally, there are also these Six Epigraphes Antiques, the only piece that Debussy managed to produce in 1914, the year the war broke out. This is for four hands and it’s with my partner Katia Skanavi, who is a pianist I have long admired.
WFMT: What did Debussy hear in the musical voice of Komitas?
Painting of Komitas by Yeghishe Tadevosyan, 1936
Gerstein: The Debussy Études are paired with Komitas’ Armenian Dances, the composer’s last published works. Scholars are often unable to discern what is a reinterpretation of the folk material, and what is his original composing. You can understand how impressed Debussy and Saint-Saëns and Vincent d’Indy would have been with this music that sounds so other. I think it comes from large mountain ranges and lots of space, and a very different sense of time is reflected in this music.
There is one song, “Antuni,” that translates as “Homeless” and talks about displacement and loss. And there is also a final song by Debussy called “Christmas Song for the Orphans of War.” In it, Debussy seems to nearly quote Komitas. I wanted to find somebody that would be at home singing this repertoire in Armenian, and I’m very happy to have convinced a young Armenian singer, Ruzan Mantashyan, to take part in this album.
Later, I encountered in a letter of Komitas about a sponsor — Mr. Mantashyan — who sent him to Berlin to study and bought him a grand piano. I asked Ruzan, who said the patron was a cousin of her great-grandfather! So that’s a nice coincidence, or not a coincidence at all…
WFMT: Your combination of music with photos and artwork and essays is so impactful, so much more than the sum of its parts.
Gerstein: I wanted to make a physical album that provides another layer of experience that we no longer have if you just stream it on your computer or phone. I decided that there should be two essays that outline the historical context and two essays about music, including having Heinz Holliger, the Swiss composer, speak about Debussy’s late music and saying some things that you absolutely cannot read anywhere else about Debussy.
The New York Times did this huge article about it in the Arts & Leisure section. But then for the international edition, they actually put the start of the article on the front page! It’s very rare that the Armenian Genocide is mentioned on the front page of the Times. And this is especially rewarding to me – that it’s possible to get this discussion going, not in a political column, not in a historical write-up, but in a cultural context. We’re talking about music, a music album, but we are talking about World War I, we’re talking about the Armenian Genocide, about Komitas, whom many people don’t know. So, there is a kind of missionary zeal here.
To experience the complete Music in Time of War album — featuring photos, essays, and more, visit kirillgerstein.com. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
