Violinist Avsharian’s unique concert mixes music with brainwave education
At first glimpse, violinist Chenyi Avsharian’s program for her recital at Zankel Hall on Saturday evening, entitled “Boundless Horizon,” didn’t overly impress. It was comprised mostly of warhorses of the violin repertoire, some leaning to the overtly sentimental.
Avsharian, however, had higher aspirations for the concert. She not only sought to entertain, but also to inspire, by demonstrating the effects of music on the brain in her efforts to expand musical education for children.
Born in Beijing, Avsharian’s musical talents were nurtured under the guidance of her father, Chen Yong-Gang, who was also a violinist. In her youth, she won multiple awards in China and also trained at Meadowmount School of Music, which was founded by the legendary violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian. In addition to performing, Avsharian is COO of Shar Music Company, founded by her husband, Charles Avsharian, to serve the bowed strings musical community.
Through her non-profit Neuraltones, Avsharian employs neuroscience to explore the connection between music and brain function to promote the benefits of a musical education, especially for underserved children. In the concert, the association was demonstrated by the projection of electroencephalogram (EEG) brain imaging recorded as she performed. The images revealed exactly which areas of her brain were triggered by the emotions being expressed through the music.
Program notes for each work were also projected which delved briefly into the lives of the composers and provided context for each work. They were accompanied by AI-generated imagery, which resulted in some fanciful depictions of characters in works such as Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst’s Fantaisie brillante sur la Marche et la Romance d’Otello de G Rossini, excepts from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and Franz Waxman’s virtuoso showpiece Carmen Fantasy.
Surprisingly, not a word was spoken during the concert. Avsharian, accompanied with the utmost sensitivity and impeccable musicianship by pianist Rohan De Silva, permitted the music to speak for itself. Her playing was so captivating, that even the visuals proved but momentary distractions.
The concert began with the familiar strains of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” as arranged by Heifetz, whose spirit coursed throughout the concert. In addition to the Foster song, Avsharian would perform his arrangement of Mendelssohn’s “Auf Flügeln des Gesanges” and two of his transcriptions of songs from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Waxman composed Carmen Fantasie at his request.
Avsharian graced these familiar melodies with simplicity, expressiveness, and rich tone. The emotion which she generated through her playing was palpable. Perhaps even lovelier and more touching was her playing of the Chinese folk song “Mo Li Hua” in her own transcription. As photos of white jasmine flowers appeared behind her, and many in the audience hummed or sang softly as she played.
Shostakovich and light, entertaining music are not generally synonymous, but the Soviet composer wrote film music to pay the bills. To keep his name before the public and generate income, he asked his friend Lev Atovmyan to arrange suites of his movie music for home and school performances.
One such effort was Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano. Avsharian was joined by the promising young violinist Simon Hagopian-Rogers in selections from this work. As entertaining as the music was, the real purpose was to show how both violinist’s brains responded in kind to the music they performed.
Avsharian’s virtuosic side was on display not only in Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy, which ended the concert, but also in Ernst’s Othello Fantasie, which she performed in the first half of the program. Ernst was inspired to write the piece by Rossini’s opera Otello, first staged in Naples in 1816. The violinist soared through its technical challenges, including double-stopping, chromatic scales in thirds, and the composer’s extended use of harmonics. Equally impressive were the elegance and depth of emotion which she brought to the more lyrical passages.
The most musical profound experiences of the concert came in works by Brahms and Piazzolla. Brahms was 20 years old when he contributed a single movement to a sonata jointly composed by Schumann and his pupil Albert Dietrich for the violinist Joseph Joachim, known as the F-A-E Sonata. The name was derived from Joachim’s personal motto Frei aber einsam (“Free but lonely”).
Brahms’s contribution, known as the Scherzo in C Minor or Sonatensatz, gained success as a standalone work. It is a youthful, turbulent piece, which displayed the depth of Avsharian and De Silva’s musical partnership. They maintained energy and tautness throughout the piece, instilling it with depths of emotion in equal measure whether Brahms was at his most lyrical or grandiose.
Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango, however, was the emotional core of the entire concert. Originally composed for cello, Le Grand Tango is the Argentinian composer’s tribute to the dance form itself. Le Grand Tango is a work full of rhythm and drive. Tones of grander richness and depth in Avsharian’s playing underscored the extreme mood swings Piazzolla depicted and the violinist captured through her impassioned playing.
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