Concert audiences around the world have been thrilled and transported by the emotive musicianship of master pianist Sahan Arzruni. Those emotions will be especially poignant during an upcoming concert in Westchester, NY, when the artist offers a musical tribute to a departed friend.
Indeed, the late Lionel Galstaun was a friend not only to Mr. Arzruni, but to the Armenian American community at large–and especially to the Armenians of Westchester county, where he had become a fixture during the last decades of his life. Now, on the one-year anniversary of his passing, that community is sponsoring a special concert in Dr. Galstaun’s memory. Scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, February 23, 2003, at White Plains’ St. Gregory the Enlightener Church, Mr. Arzruni will be the featured artist.
“Lionel was a beloved member of the parish,” explains Mr. Arzruni, “and its members and pastor, Fr. Karekin Kasparian, were eager to do something special in Lionel’s memory to mark this anniversary. It’s an honor for me to be a part of it.” “Our friendship started because of music,” he adds, “and it’s so appropriate to remember Lionel through music now.”
A renowned scientist with a long, distinguished career as a chemical engineer, Dr. Galstaun’s life became intertwined with the music world through his marriage to the late Maro Ajemian, the pre-eminent Armenian pianist of her generation. “They were a wonderful couple,” recalls Mr. Arzruni, and their home was a veritable Who’s Who of the American musical world. Through Lionel and Maro, I first met such figures as Alan
Hovhannes, John Cage and William Masselos.” Arzruni’s friendship with the Galstauns blossomed out of a project they worked on together in 1969: a comprehensive recording of the music of Komitas, commemorating the centennial of the composer’s birth. At the time, Arzruni was a young pianist; as a boy in his native Istanbul, he had played the organ for the choir Komitas himself had founded at the turn of the century.
The Galstauns took a liking to the recent Juilliard School graduate, and encouraged his career in music. “They became more than mere friends to me,” Arzuni recalls; “they were an important part of my extended family. And they felt the same towards me, I think.” The close friendship continued, even after the Galstauns moved across the country, first to San Francisco, then to Houston, TX. The Galstauns were living in the latter city in 1978, when, much before her time, Maro Ajemian passed away. At a memorial concert held in New York, Sahan Arzruni paid tribute to his departed friend by premiering his own piano arrangement of Yekmalian’s “Hayr Mer.”
Now 25 years later, the same composition will play a special role in the February 23 concert. “I’ll be starting this concert with that piece, which I call ‘Invocation,'” Mr. Arzruni says. But this time, there will be a slight but significant difference. “I think this one-year anniversary of Lionel’s death is the right occasion to revive the piece and re-dedicate it–this time to Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Galstaun.”
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