EDMONTON – Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian has held spellbound crowds in music halls all over the world but she’s never had an audience as big as the one that heard her sing in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
On the phone from Toronto, Bayrakdarian gleefully reminds the caller that the The Two Towers soundtrack went on to win a Grammy.
Bayrakdarian, who performs at the Winspear Wednesay, says she got the Two Towers call after Academy Award-winning composer Howard Shore heard some of her famously otherworldly Armenian hymns off her first CD Joyous Light. “It’s because of the Armenian recording. The composer heard it and said, ‘This is the voice I’ve been looking for,’ “ she says. Both Evenstar—the song Shore selected for the Two Towers soundtrack—and the Armenian liturgical music reveal a singer who clearly loves the sound of the pure human voice. Her repertoire includes opera—she’s off to Brussels to sing Elisa in Mozart’s Il re pastore—but it also features Rachmaninoff’s Vocalese and Villa Lobos’ Bachianas brasileiras No. 5, both songs without words. Bayrakdarian says she’s after something very personal in her music.
“What I’m most interested in is beautiful singing, not bel canto repertoire, which is Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini. “I’m interested in something that speaks to me. That’s my main guideline to everything that I sing, whether it’s opera, recital or concert.”
The program she has planned for Wednesday will reveal a full range of her vocal interests. For the first half of the concert, she’ll be alone with accompaniest Serouj Kradjian.
The Spanish songs by Grenados she has programmed come out of the mood of Mediterranean. “They speak about love in a humorous way, love in a sad way, bitter love. They revolve around love.” Spain, with its constant blue skies and sunshine, inspires a carefree quality to the music, she says. The first half also features some “acrobatic” Vivaldi which will test the singer’s nerve. “If the tempo that I take is a hair slower or a hair faster, it will be a disaster,” she says with a musical laugh. And the Mozart love songs reveal the Austrian classical composer’s romantic side. “Any Mozart musicologist will say the way the piano part is written, it makes love to the voice.”
The concert’s second half will bring us back to what grounds Bayrakdarian’s life—her Armenian heritage and Christian tradition. The Canadian premiere of Christos Hatzis’ Light from the Cross, dedicated to Bayrachdarian, is an orchestral treatment of Armenian hymns sung during Holy Week. Bayrakdarian believes the composer has found a fresh way to present this old music. “Christos Hatzis is a genius because as opposed to completely reinventing these melodies, he has left them as pure as possible.
These were melodies that have survived through the centuries, so there’s something in them that made them survive.” The religious significance is at the foreground for the soprano who began her singing life in her Armenian church. “Especially since we’re in the Lent period, it’s perfect.”
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