Movses Pogossian: J.S. Bach: Six Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin

When it comes to Johann Sebastian Bach's works for solo violin and solo cello, it seems to me that their popularity and influence are at a peak. Or is it just that my appetite for hearing them has become more insatiable as I seem to continually hear them anew? But it is not just me. I have come across and mentioned on these pages a number of interesting compositions in the contemporary new music scene that make use of solo Bach in creating new confluences. And the number of new releases of recorded performances of the solo works seems higher than ever before...and more diverse in terms of the baroque to modern spectrum of possibilities.

I won't try to explain why this may be so. I cannot easily say, except to note the possibility that we are in a new baroque era ourselves, aesthetically speaking. A discussion on that would tip the balance of this review away from the music itself, so I must cut it short. Regardless, the solo works speak to us today as some of the most direct expressions of Bach's genius, surely. And string players have for a long time had the tackling of these works as a key part of their training, no? What counts in the end is their beauty, their facing of the musical cosmos with just four strings and a wealth of inventive brilliance.

Armenian violinist Movses Pogossian brings us a new version of Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin on 3-CDs (New Focus Recordings FCR 178) and I for one am glad he did. I've been immersed in the recording for a couple of weeks, sounding a constant as the parade of life passes by, anchoring me in the unassuming but vastly rich music that counters all that life might hold in store, or amplifies it, depending on how life is at the time. For me it is more a countering these days.

At any rate Pogossian does not bring us an ultra-baroque reading, with catgut strings, baroque bows and a litany of ornamentational end points. He choses the conventional modern violin and a straightforward but feelingful production of the six works. Nonetheless it sounds very true to Bach, so I guess one could say it is a middle-of-the-road version. Pogossian gets inside the music and gives us strong performances of the very sturdy sections, then slows down to savor the movingly preludian portions.

In the end Pogossian sings from his depths and thereby channels Bach in ways that bring us joy. I most certainly recommend this version if you don't have one yet. It is a benchmark for how we hear the music today. It also extends and compliments other versions, you who like me cannot seem to get enough.

Pogossian is a true artist. His Bach rings with its own creative truth. That is a great thing.

— Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Classical, 4.4.2017

On the back cover of the booklet inserted in the album sleeve is the handwritten note: “in memory of our common research of g minor. a minor sonata / Budapest 6.9.2015 / Márta-György Kurtág.” Before recording the Sonatas and Partitas Movses Pogossian journeyed from Los Angeles to Budapest to work with the 89-year-old Kurtág and his wife Márta. Pogossian had collaborated with the composer before, but on Kurtág’s music, notably the Kafka Fragments, which he performed with soprano Tony Arnold in Toronto this past March. It was then that I asked Movses about his “research” with the Kurtágs. He said that Kurtág was very particular about harmony, structure and tempo and had an allergy to anything that did not feel right. Capturing the character of the piece was the most important thing. For instance, Kurtág said the subject of the A Minor Fugue should be “without emotion,” suggesting the link between key and Affektenlehre.

Their “research” resulted in transforming the Sonatas and Partitas into something in the nature of six Baroque altarpieces, where each movement is a panel depicting a tableau that illustrates some aspect of the key in question. Pogossian remains faithful to the affect of each set, even in the Double of the Corrente of the B Minor Partita, where he frames the torrential stream of notes within the penitential mood of that key. Phrasing is free, as though allowing singers to breathe and dancers to pause between phrases. Pogossian’s approach is far from those who treat this repertoire as though an extreme sport.

The G Minor Adagio, dark timbre, grieving harmonies, each phrase rising from stillness, the fioriture parsed for motivic shapes, the last chord held 12 seconds a niente for a running time of nearly six minutes; the grave Fugue (Kurtág wished it slower); the lilting Siciliana danced with sad restraint; the grimly brilliant Presto. The desolate A Minor Sonata, the Andante, an aria of loss (compare Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben). Pogossian plays the D Minor Partita with noble restraint, and takes the cosmic Chaconne at a stately quarter = 46. He treats the Adagio of the C Major Sonata as though the Creator is breathing on the waters (eighth = 40), while the Olympian Fugue follows as the fully formed world. The pastoral Largo in F major is all smiles, and the final Allegro could be titled Tutto nel mondo è burla. The E Major Partita radiates uttermost joy.

The three CDs are a panoply, but they give only a hint of when one sees Pogossian in person, for he enacts the affects of the Sonatas and Partitas with his whole body and breath. Such intense identification of body, mind and spirit with sound is a rare gift. I am also grateful for the notes by Paul Griffiths, who wrote virtually short poems on each of the types of movements. They end with words on the Ciacconia: “Finally the voices spiral into the keynote. This was the lesson that had to be taught and learned. How to end.”

— Austin Clarkson, 5.30.2017, The Whole Note

Masterfully midwifed into being by violinist Movses Pogossian and his Armenian Music Project colleagues, Stanzas in August presents the latest far-reaching addition to their multi-volume advocacy for the music of Armenia. The 256-minute collection is smartly presented in four parts, two separately devoted to the music of composers Ashot Zohrabyan and Koharik Gazarossian and the other two featuring material by Aram Khachaturian, Tigran Mansurian, Ghazaros Saryan, Artur Avanesov, Vahram Sargsyan, and Aram Hovhannisyan. Whereas the first part presents chamber ensemble works in different combinations, the fourth emphasizes solo works, with eight of nine delivered by a single player. The logistics involved in producing a release of such monumental proportions are staggering, but the indefatigable energy shown by Pogossian to bring it to the finish line impresses too.

The music of Armenian composers clearly differentiates itself from that of their counterparts in France, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. If an undercurrent of mournfulness permeates the Armenians' music, it's only natural, given the struggles the country's people have endured, the Armenian Genocide to cite one example. That said, outside influences have seeped into the music to enrich it and broaden its scope. Couple that with the presence of traditional and sacred elements and you've got a music whose branches extend in any number of possible directions. Stanzas in August, which exemplifies that in presenting world premieres, commissions, and homages, was recorded between May 2024 and June '25 at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in Los Angeles where Pogossian is a Distinguished Professor of Violin. A host of instrumentalists joins him, including saxophonist Jan Berry Baker, clarinetist Anoush Pogossian, violinists Varty Manouelian, Eva Aronian, and Andrew McIntosh, violists Che-Yen Chen and Cara Pogossian, cellists Ben Hong and Edvard Pogossian, pianists Nare Karoyan and Artur Avanesov, and the VEM String Quartet (Movses plus violinist Ally Cho, violist Damon Zavala, and cellist Niall Taro Ferguson).

Inaugurating the first volume is Sargsyan's haunting Vox Temporum (2025), with the composer himself delivering the vocal part. Scored for the unusual combination of voice, saxophone, and string quartet, the three-part piece at times sees Baker's alto entwining with Sargsyan's melismatic voice like Jan Garbarek's with The Hilliard Ensemble. Episodes of restless agitation destabilize the opening movement, its adventurousness a harbinger of what follows. Peaceful and supplicating by comparison are the “Manook (Little One)” and "Calmato e poco allungato - Coda” movements. Techniques of various kinds are explored within the piece, from pizzicati and harmonics to whistling and jaw's harp-like throat singing. Also written in 2025, Hovhannisyan's String Quartet bristles with Psycho-like electricity, agitation driving the players' expressions and the composer transmuting their energies into scalpel-sharp gestures of venomous angularity. Saryan's second string quartet (1986) follows, its elegiac intro worlds removed from the fury of the work preceding it. Gentleness gradually morphs into vitality, however, with exuberant assertions by the four players converging into counterpoint, pizzicati, and rhythmic thrust. At disc's end, Avanesov's trio Unruhig (2024) enacts a spiky dialogue between clarinet, cello, and piano, clipped fragments at the start eventually settling into longer if still jaunty cross-currents.

The second volume's a special one for focusing exclusively on the solo piano works of Gazarossian (1907-67), whose music developed against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide. With her family somehow managing to survive mass arrest, deportation, and death, she was able to continue her music studies (in Paris too) and went on to produce concertos, chamber music, and, of course, solo keyboard music. Karoyan, a recognized champion of the composer, is at the piano for all ten of the pieces, six of them multi-part. Setting the tone, Cantique chimes resplendently, the listener pulled instantly into Gazarossian's singular realm. Huit Variations sur un thème populaire du Père Komitas presents eight succinct variations—luminous, haunting, pretty, and playful—on a prototypically enchanting folk theme by Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935). Two suites appear, the first distancing itself from Armenian style with graceful flourishes of Romanticism and Impressionism, beginning with the first suite's rather Lizst-ian “Prélude” and Ravel-esque “Paresse” carrying over into the second's muscular “Au son du Davoul.” A quartet of Préludes (1947) appears, “Mon enfant, ta mère et morte” naturally solemn, “Chérie, ton nom est Chouchan” radiant, and “La lune de la nuit” hushed. A dignified “Choral” and clandestine “Nocturne (Midi-Nocturne)" distinguish the four-part Album bien tempéré, while “Du monde céleste, les voix arrivent” (from Cantiques de Noël), “O Sainte Vierge agenouillons-nous devant Toi” (Trois cantiques pour la main gauche) and Réjouissons-nous de ta naissance find Gazarossian at her most haunting.

Zohrabyan (1945-2023) is the sole figure featured on the third volume, with three string quartets (all in single movements) interspersed with piano and cello sonatas. These chamber works move away from a strict Armenian style to suggest the influence of other composers (Ligeti and Schnittke come to mind), on his writing. From 1994, the first quartet lunges into action with aggressive gestures before easing into a lyrical passage that's passed baton-like from one member to another. Also performed by VEM String Quartet, String Quartet No. 2 (1998) opens scaldingly but soon enough pivots to an Armenian song by Komitas, “Antuni,” with a rustic violin quote quickly taken up by other members and collecting into a writhing, Ligeti-esque mass. Both quartets aren't without angst and aren't afraid of dissonance, savagery, or luminosity either. The third quartet, arriving twenty-six years after the first and carrying the subtitle Stanzas in August, does in fact develop as a series of self-contained stanzas with conspicuous rests between them. With Avanesov at the keyboard and packaging three movements into one track, Zohrabyan's 1979 piano sonata enters in an array of sprinkles before branching out into probing examinations that blossom from a musical cell. Avanesov's also at the helm of the Cello Sonata, written a year earlier and featuring Edvard Pogossian. Alongside piano flourishes and upper-register plunks, the cello waxes rhapsodically, his lyrical lines thickened with double-stops and bent notes flooding the sound field.

As mentioned, the final volume concentrates on solo performances, with only one of the nine a duo. Works by four composers are presented two, one apiece for Komitas and Tigran Mansurian, two for Khachaturian, and five for Avanesov. Violist Cara Pogossian opens the volume with an impassioned rendering of Khatchaturian's Sonata-Song for viola solo (1976), an inwardly directed excursion that fluctuates between episodes of intensive self-examination and dance-inflected expressions. The disc's other viola setting is likewise performed by Pogossian, this one Mansurian's Ode to the Lotus, which in its character and design is strikingly complementary to Khatchaturian's. The disc's longest solo performance is Eva Aronian's rendition of Khachaturian's Sonata-Monologue for violin solo, with the performance reaching an odyssey-level sixteen minutes. Scored “for singing male cellist,” Dies ist ein Lied für dich allein features Edvard Pogossian on cello but gives the vocal part to Avanesov, the work's composer. Veering into Baroque and lamentation realms, the ten-minute piece assumes the character of a severely stripped-down ritual.

A definite highlight of the final volume is Avanesov's solo piano treatment of Chinar Es…, a traditional Armenian rural folk song that's presented three times. The stirring theme's voiced directly and with little embellishment in the hymnal first version (from Avanesov's book of piano solos, Feux Follets); in his second treatment, the theme's still clearly audible though this time clothed in regal Renaissance garb and subjected to a breezy set of variations; in the last version, Sargsyan's piano arrangement of Komitas' transcription might well be the release's loveliest moment in capturing its serenity so purely. Fittingly, Movses Pogossian gets the last word with a solo violin performance of Avanesov's Cadenza. Needless to say, a recording of such marathon-like duration requires stamina and dedication on the listener's part, especially when a number of pieces push past the ten-minute mark (Gazarossian's seem miniatures by comparison), but effort is rewarded. Enhancing this important release is a deluxe booklet featuring photos, detailed commentaries, a Karoyan article on Gazarossian, and composer tributes to Zohrabyan. Such an elaborate presentation is appropriate for a project of such immense value and one so deserving of attention.

— Textura, 6.28.2026