Complete in itself, this solo album by Armenian pianist Lusine Grigoryan, can also be considered a companion volume to the Gurdjieff Ensemble’s critically-acclaimed album of Komitas’s music.

It was recorded at the same 2015 session in Lugano, directed by Manfred Eicher, and has some overlapping of repertoire. Where Levon Eskenian’s versions with the Gurdjieff Ensemble explored some of the composer’s sonic inspirations with folk instruments, Lusine Grigoryan conveys some of the same colours with her wide palette of piano articulation and her exploration of timbral possibilities: in her playing one can catch the flavour of the duduk, the tar, the zurna et cetera, as Komitas intended.

As Levon Eskenian has noted, Grigoryan “conveys the mysterious presence typical of rustic and ritual music”. Pieces heard on this recording, the ECM debut of Lusine Grigoryan, include Komitas’s Seven Songs, Seven Dances, Pieces for Children, and Msho Shoror.