Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 & Babadjanian: Heroic Ballad Jean-Paul Gasparian, Berner Symphonieorchester & Stefan Blunier

• Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18:
• 1 Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: I. Moderato 10:23
• 2 Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: II. Adagio sostenuto 10:57
• 3 Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: III. Allegro scherzando 11:23
• Arno Babadjanian (1921-1983): Heroic Ballad for Piano & Orchestra:
• 4 Babadjanian: Heroic Ballad for Piano & Orchestra 22:24
• Total Runtime 55:07

Info for Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 & Babadjanian: Heroic Ballad

The young pianist Jean-Paul Gasparian signs here his first album with orchestra with the stainless Rachmaninoff 2 and the beautiful discovery of an Armenian composer, Arno Babadjanian, whose unpredictable career ends in the jazz and even the pop of the 70s!

Gasparian: his surname alone sounds like a promise, a calling – that of the East, of the plains of Asia Minor, of the Caucasus mountains – a kind of foretaste of the music featured here in the artist’s first recording with an orchestra : Rachmaninoff’s ageless Second Concerto – which has been accompanying Gasparian as a playmate since his early years, even before he entered Jacques Rouvier’s class at the Paris Conservatory – and the very rarely performed Ballade héroïque by the pianist’s compatriot Arno Babadjanian. Indeed, Jean-Paul Gasparian’s origins are Armenian on his father’s side; he carries within a part of this land steeped in tradition, although he is French-born and lives in France.

The first time he set foot on Armenian ground was only in October 2021. “Both my parents are pianists”, explains Gasparian. “My father is a composer and concert pianist, my mother is a teacher. Both of their careers are reflected within my own. My father was born in Armenia and arrived in France with his parents when he was 14. [..] Therefore, I have been immersed in a predominantly Russian musical universe since I was a child and am familiar with recordings made by Richter, Gilels and Mravinsky, thanks to old family LPs dating from the Soviet era. Prokofiev, Scriabin and Khachaturian’s music has always accompanied me, so it seemed only natural to choose Rachmaninoff and Babadjanian for my first recording with orchestra.”

The “logic” doesn’t stop there since Jean-Paul Gasparian had already chosen Rachmaninoff’s 9 Preludes op. 39 for his first solo recording, which he made when he was a first-year student in Jacques Rouvier’s class. Thanks to a Beethoven-Rachmaninoff recital, the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad jury later awarded him the “Prix Thierry Scherz 2020”, which led to this new album. [..]

Jean-Paul Gasparian, piano
Berner Symphonieorchester
Stefan Blunier, conductor

Jean-Paul Gasparian
The 25-year-old pianist […] enchantes with the power of his playing combined with a noble tenderness. He specialised in Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, which he serves admirably in recital and on recordings.”

Jean-Paul Gasparian, born in Paris in 1995, studied at the National Conservatoire in Paris with Olivier Gardon, Jacques Rouvier, Michel Beroff, Laurent Cabasso, Claire Désert and Michel Dalberto. Gasparian has taken part in international piano masterclasses with Pavel Gililov, Elisso Virsaladze and Tatiana Zelikman, was selected for the Verbier Academy 2014, and is Prize Winner of the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum in Salzburg 2010. In June 2018, he completed his Artist Diploma at the Royal College of Music in London, with Prof. Vanessa Latarche.

In 2019, he won the Prix Therry Scherz at the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, allowing him the opportunity to record a CD with the Berner Symphonieorchester, to be released on the claves label.

He is also the Second Prize winner (First Prize was not awarded) of the Bremen European Competition 2014 and appeared as well in the José Iturbi Competition 2015, the Lyon International Competition 2013, the Hastings International Concerto Competition 2013, the Tel-Hai Concerto Competition 2012, and as semi-finalist of the Geza Anda Competition in 2015. He is also the piano laureate of the Cziffra Foundation Prize 2015, the l’Or du Rhin Foundation Prize 2016, and won the 1st Philosophy Prize at the Concours Général des Lycéens de France (French national competition) in 2013. In 2020 he was in the final round of Victoires de la Musique France.

Jean-Paul Gasparian has appeared with orchestras such as the Orchester National d’Ile-de-France, the Bremen Philharmonic, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Orchester de l’Opéra de Rouen, the Orchestre de Normandie, the Orchestre de la Garde Républicaine, the Serbian Radio-Television Orchestra, the Montenegro Symphonic Orchestra, the Valencia Symphonic Orchestra, and at a young age already brings a very diverse repertoire to the stage, including works by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Gershwin.

Gasparian has appeared as guest at major festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, La Roque d’Anthéron, Nohant Festival Chopin, Montpellier-Festival, Festival Chopin de Bagatelle, Lisztomanias, and Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo. In summer 2020, he performed selected Beethoven sonatas as part of the Festival Intégrales des Sonates de Beethoven by Radio France, which due to COVID-19, was presented as a streaming concert. Gasparian has given performances in venues such as the Salzburg Mozarteum, Tonhalle Zürich, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Die Glocke Bremen, Belgrade Kolarac, the Museum of Modern Art in Tel-Aviv, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the Maison de la Radio, the Salle Cortot and the Salle Gaveau in Paris. In 2022 he will debut at the Philharmonie de Paris with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Orchestra National d’Ile-de-France under the baton of Ilyich Rivas, further concerts in the area are to follow.

The Classica magazine has ranked Jean-Paul Gasparian among the ten most promising young pianists of his generation. Both the Pianiste and Piano News magazines have dedicated detailed portraits of him. His debut CD with a Russian program around Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Prokofiev was released in February 2018 on Évidence Classics and has received rave reviews for the young Frenchman. For his second solo album, released in 2019 and dedicated to the works of Chopin, he yet again proves that he is a musical talent that you absolutely must keep an eye on.

Since September 2016, Gasparian is artist-in-residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation, together with Shuichi Okada and Gauthier Broutin, with whom he founded the Cantor Trio. He is supported by the Safran Foundation for Music and is a Steinway Artist.

The Bern Symphony Orchestra
can look back on 145 years of tradition as the orchestra of the Swiss capital. Founded as the “Bernischer Orchesterverein” in 1877, the orchestra with its 100 musicians from over 20 different nations has long since become an institution in Bern. Since 2011, it has been part of a four-discipline operation alongside the opera, theater and ballet, which will bear the name Bühnen Bern from 2021.

This season will be the first time that the orchestra will be without its long-time principal conductor Mario Venzago, who took up the position in the summer of 2010. His predecessors include Andrey Boreyko, Dmitrij Kitajenko, Charles Dutoit and Peter Maag. Renowned guest conductors such as Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan and, more recently, Sir Neville Marriner, Eliahu Inbal, Jun Märkl and Michael Sanderling have shaped and continue to shape the orchestra. World-class soloists such as Joshua Bell, Sol Gabetta, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say, as well as young classical stars such as Kit Armstrong, Lise de la Salle and Alexandre Kantorow, help to spread the reputation of the Bern Symphony Orchestra far beyond the country’s borders. This leads to regular invitations at home and abroad, as in May 2017 for a tour to China.

In addition to symphony concerts and opera and ballet productions, the orchestra makes a point of reaching a wide audience through a diverse range of formats, such as family and young children concerts. A special highlight of each season is the open-air concert on the Bundesplatz. The Bern Symphony Orchestra, which has undergone a generational change in recent years, is distinguished by its exceptional programming and does not shy away from challenging world premieres. On the contrary, the promotion of contemporary composers is a matter close to the orchestra’s heart.

Stefan Blunier
has been chief conductor of the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música since the beginning of 2021. In addition to his engagements in Porto, Stefan Blunier will conduct in the 2021/22 season the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Darmstadt State Orchestra, l’Orchestre symphonique de l’Opéra de Toulon and the Singapore Symphony. At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein he will return with Verdi’s Macbeth.

Booklet for Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 & Babadjanian: Heroic Ballad