Hasmik Papyan, who lives in Austria and performs worldwide, started recording Komitas’s songs 15 years ago. “I had decided that my first recording had to be a song written by Komitas, and my dream became a reality.” According to the singer’s husband Conrad Cuhn, who is a playwright for the Austrian state theatre and the Miunkhen opera theatre, nowadays it’s very hard to find a recording studio who will do something this big. “Recording studios nowadays are in a downfall. As a German, I’m very proud that countries abroad will hear Komitas for the first time,” he said in Armenian, which he speaks wonderfully. The Bavarian radio and the German “Audite” publishing house released this long, book/CD (high-sound super audio CD), which is going to be spread worldwide. The CD will also be sold on the Internet website and it’s already on sale in Armenia. The listener can get acquainted with the life of Komitas and the lyrics to his songs translated into English, German and French via the 72-page book that comes wthi the CD. “Komitas has an influence on everybody, but now, for the first time ever, listeners can also get acquainted with the lyrics to the songs. When Europeans understand what he’s singing about, they’ll also know about Armenian history,” said H. Papyan, who has tried to sing Komitas’s songs without the melodramatic and suffering tone and has added a little of her optimism. The singer plans to publish the musical notes of Komitas’s songs and compositions.
The release of the album “Dedicated to Komitas” also took a long time due to the fact that it was necessary to decode the manuscripts of Komitas at the Charents literature museum in Yerevan. The Ministry of Culture of Armenia permitted taking those manuscripts to Germany and decode them via the computer. “It would be impossible to use the musical notes without decoding because I couldn’t read them,” said H. Papyan. In addition, besides the 26 Armenian songs, there are also nine new songs, which Komitas wrote based on the texts of German poets during his years of study in Berlin. The recordings of the songs were done in France with accompaniment of famous pianist Vartan Mamikonyan, who lives in France. Last year, Papyan and Mamikonyan presented Komitas’s songs to the Yerevan audience. They will throw a similar concert in France within the framework of the Year of Armenia in France event. “We will have a concert in Paris in March during which we will only sing Armenian songs,” says Papyan. This is an exclusive piece of work done by two young, famous Armenian performers. Both Hasmik Papyan and Vartan Mamikonyan are delicate, high-class masters who feel the need to go back to their roots and present those roots in a new way. According to Papyan, this book/CD is first and foremost for Europeans because Komitas is almost unknown for listeners abroad. After hearing Komitas’s songs, the individual will once again have the desire to get amazed, wonder, be proud and be grateful..
P.S. Armenian American benefactor Rita Palyan was present during the premiere and she made beautiful remarks about Hasmik Papyan, calling her a “beautiful Armenian girl”. She told an interesting story about Komitas. When the American city of Detroit asked great Armenian sculptor Arto Chakmakchyan to build a statue in the heart of the city, the sculptor decided to picture Komitas. That square is the place for gathering of residents and the bronze and black statue of Komitas has become an inseparable part of the square. Years later, when A. Chakmakchyan made another trip to Detroit, he was amazed to see a group of children playing in the square and the parents were calling them “Komaitas”. When the sculptor asked them what that name meant, the blacks said: “We don’t know who Komaitas is, but that famous black man’s statue is standing in the square of our city, so we decided to call our children Komaitas. Maybe he was really famous.” This is the unexpected and strange trace that Komitas left for a couple of black children living in Detroit.