Symphonic Elegy for Armenian Genocide

Undoubtedly a rarity--if not a first--in post-World War II history, you’ll find a quote from Adolf Hitler at the top of program notes to a serious music concert.

“Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” reads the Hitler quote, expressing the dictator’s expectation that he’d get away with exterminating the Jews.

Jeff Manookian took up the challenge with his “Symphony of Tears,” which received its West Coast premiere Saturday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

The composer led the Oratorio Society of Utah and the Pasadena Symphony in this work memorializing the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Turks, a charge which, for the record, the Turkish government rejects. France and Israel have officially recognized the event. The United States has not.

A concert pianist, now music critic for the Salt Lake Tribune, Manookian is no well-intentioned musical naif. He wrote the seven-movement, 50-minute work in an eclectic, sophisticated style that evokes Prokofiev, Ravel and Leonard Bernstein, as well as film scores and traditional folk and church Armenian modes.

The text by the composer and Bradford Nelson incorporates a Te Deum and the liturgical response, “Lord have mercy,” both sung in Armenian, panoramic scenes of desolation and mayhem, and a tender lullaby between a dying mother and her young son.

The work begins and ends with the same line sung by 11-year-old boy soprano Mitchell Prettyman: “Where is the grave of my father?”

The ambitious scope of the project would tax the resources of the very greatest composers, and it cannot be said that Manookian has succeeded in his aim of bringing attention to the event with music of universal and memorable appeal.

Of course, we need to make allowance for the amplification of the soloists and the 49-member chorale. This led to a disembodied sound that initially seemed appropriate to the horrific subject, but which quickly grew problematic.

The chorus tended to sound overblown, brassy and shrill, and its words, even when sung in English, were often obscured. The soloists, including Doris Brunatti in her extensive mezzo-soprano duties, seemed similarly dislocated from their position on stage, and it was difficult to evaluate the size, color and expressivity of their voices.

Manookian’s research into Armenian music led to material that he didn’t use in the symphony, but which he didn’t want to waste. So he incorporated it into his “Improvisations on Armenian Folk Songs,” which opened the program.

This moody, if loosely constructed, 20-minute orchestral rhapsody alternates between episodes of song and dance. The young John Pickford Richards--he was born in 1980--was the virtuosic viola soloist.

Manookian also proved a knowing if not polished conductor in Beethoven’s Fantasia in C minor for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, marking the idiom and making all the right stylistic points.

Gary Barnett was the thoughtful and meditative piano soloist. The six vocal soloists--some of whose contributions could not be made out--were drawn from the chorus. The adorable work, which regrettably is often regarded as minor, was sung in English.