Eduard Ivanovich Bagdasarian was a key figure in the modern development of Armenian music, and his piano works have a unique importance in an oeuvre which covered almost every genre.

The tremendously varied 24 Preludes (here in a world premiere recording) encompass all of the major and minor keys, with the added colour of Armenian modes. This mastery of miniature forms contrasts with the impassioned and ambitious Rhapsody, while the archetypally Romantic Nocturne draws on the tradition of the great Russian Adagio.

Mikael Ayrapetyan was born in 1984 in Yerevan, where he had his early schooling. In 2004 he entered the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. As a student, he paid great attention to the work of Armenian composers whose music had not until then been performed. Graduating in 2009, he continued postgraduate study at the Moscow Conservatory. His repertoire ranges from the baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works of Armenian composers.

Vladimir Sergeev was born in 1985 in Yaroslavl, Russia. In 1996 he won his first prize in a regional competition for young violinists and in 2000 entered the Academic Music College of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. He was a student of M L Yashvili at the Moscow Conservatory and a laureate of the All-Russian competitions of Belgorod (1999) and Ryazan (2000), and in 2009 won the International St Petersburg Competition.