The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

Just by reviewing this recording I will be accused of taking sides in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, such is the ferocity and pettiness of the largely unreported conflict. Mansurian is, as his name suggests, Armenian. Born in Beirut in 1939 to refugees from the Turkish genocide in Armenia, he returned to Yerevan in the 1950s and lived there fruitfully under Soviet rule and after.

The title track of this album is a meditation for sextet on the 13th string quartet of Dmitri Shistakovich composed in a mixture of Kurtag-like fragments and long devotional lines of Christian worship. The concentration is so intense it feels as if each note was polished and wrapped in cellophane before it was put upon the page and released into the air. In these tense and trivial times, you may find that Con anima is one of the best ways of spending the next 15 minutes of your life.

The title track of this album is a meditation for sextet on the 13th string quartet of Dmitri Shistakovich composed in a mixture of Kurtag-like fragments and long devotional lines of Christian worship. The concentration is so intense it feels as if each note was polished and wrapped in cellophane before it was put upon the page and released into the air. In these tense and trivial times, you may find that Con anima is one of the best ways of spending the next 15 minutes of your life.

(https://thecritic.co.uk)