Back, with flash

Khachaturian. You may not know his name -- but you’ve almost certainly heard his music.

If you’ve seen the movies “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Caligula” or “National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation” -- you’ve heard Khachaturian. If you’ve ever turned on a television -- you’ve heard Khachaturian, since his music has been used in countless shows, among them “Ally McBeal,” “The Simpsons” and “Scooby Doo,” as well as in commercials selling everything from vacuum cleaners to Aussie Hair Care products.

Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was once one of the world’s most famous classical musicians. His work -- including three symphonies and a much-loved Violin Concerto -- was consistently performed by the finest orchestras and soloists around the world. He conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in a program of his own compositions. When he traveled, he was greeted as a celebrity, meeting with Chaplin in Geneva, Hemingway in Cuba and Pope John XXIII in Rome. He even reached the Top 10 on the U.S. pop charts with Woody Herman and the Thundering Herd’s rendition of his bustling, xylophone-accented “Saber Dance.”

This year marks the centennial of Khachaturian’s birth, yet one of the few places you don’t hear Khachaturian is at classical music performances. In the 25 years since his death, the composer’s popularity has declined and his critical reputation has suffered. “I can’t remember the last time one of his symphonies was performed here in the West,” says Richard Taruskin, a professor of music at UC Berkeley and author of “Defining Russia Musically.”

“During his life, he was perhaps the most famous of Soviet composers ... more popular than Shostakovich and rivaled only by Prokofiev -- but these days it’s different.”

That situation may be about to change, however, for this fall will see a veritable Khachaturian cavalcade. It will include a new documentary film about him and a “Centennial Album” CD, as well the start of a touring presentation of his piano music by the Armenian American pianist Sahan Arzruni.

According to Constantine Orbelian, music director of the Philharmonia of Russia, Khachaturian’s work has been neglected “not because it should be neglected, but because much of it hasn’t been brought to the public.”

The dramatic phrasing and emotional rawness of that music have often prompted moviemakers to use it, but the drama and emotions of the composer’s life are the focus of the documentary, titled simply “Khachaturian” (but grandly subtitled “A film about one composer’s life and music during the great Soviet experiment”). The film, which will receive its world premiere at the Hollywood Film Festival on Oct. 18, shows that his biography was perfectly suited to the screen: It has a rags-to-riches element, political intrigue and a larger-than-life antagonist -- in fact, one of the 20th century’s greatest villains, Josef Stalin.

Early in his musical career, the Georgian-born Khachaturian was the darling of the Kremlin. “He was a very good Soviet boy,” Taruskin observes. “His life and success were very much a product of Soviet arts policy.” Khachaturian’s traditional-sounding compositions and his humble background (his parents were poor Armenian shopkeepers in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi) made him a shining example of the new socialist values -- so much so that despite learning music only after moving to Moscow in his late teens, he was chosen by Stalin to help form, and later serve as deputy chair of, the Soviet Composers Union.

“He bought into the Soviet system like a child,” says pianist Dora Serviarian-Kuhn, executive producer of the documentary. If one needed more evidence of Khachaturian’s devotion, in 1942, when he received the Stalin Prize -- 100,000 rubles for the ballet score “Gayane,” source of the “Saber Dance” -- he returned the money to the government, insisting that it be used to buy tanks for the Soviet army.

Denounced and exiled

Still, this devotion went for naught in 1948, when Stalin did an about-face and denounced Khachaturian -- along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich, among others -- for writing “formalist, anti-populist” music. The composer, who only 10 years earlier had titled a piece “Ode to Stalin,” was crushed.

“After he was denounced, Khachaturian would go cry on his pillow,” says Serviarian-Kuhn, and indeed the documentary contains Soviet newsreel footage of a devastated Khachaturian, taken while the charges were read aloud. “Of course, the denunciations had nothing to do with Khachaturian’s music,” Taruskin says. “He was only named because he was famous. It was the Communists’ way of saying, ‘You think you are big? We are bigger.’ ” Khachaturian formally apologized and accepted exile from Moscow without complaint.

To demonstrate anew his dedication to socialism, however, Khachaturian began work on a ballet about Spartacus; party officials granted him approval only because Karl Marx once wrote that the rebel Roman slave was the “true representative of the proletariat of antiquity.” “Spartacus” became a sensation in Russia and was subsequently staged all over the world. (Friday and Saturday, the Grigorovich Ballet Company will perform the famous 1968 Bolshoi choreography at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.) With the death of Stalin in 1953, followed by the success of “Spartacus,” Khachaturian’s status was gradually restored. He was eventually readmitted to the Composers Union -- but the denunciation had taken its toll. He never attempted any major symphonic works after 1948, and his last 30 years were spent primarily writing music to accompany films or plays.

Now, 55 years after the denunciation, there is a concerted effort to bring Khachaturian back into the public eye -- and ear. In Los Angeles, the official centennial celebrations will kick off Sept. 28, with an all-Khachaturian concert featuring pianist Arzruni at Agajanian Hall in Canoga Park.

The performance will be the first stop of a tour, sponsored by the Armenian General Benevolent Union, during which Arzruni is scheduled to play and lecture in cities around the world. The tour is to culminate in New York next May with a seven-hour marathon concert featuring all of Khachaturian’s chamber and piano music.

Speaking by phone from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, Arzruni explains why the centennial is so important: “Khachaturian is Armenia’s most important composer. He is its musical ambassador to the world at large.” Indeed, Khachaturian is the pride of Yerevan, where he was buried after his death in 1978, but because he was neither born nor raised in Armenia, some question categorizing him as Armenian at all.

“He was born in Georgia, spent his whole career in Moscow, and somehow he’s been designated the great Armenian composer?” Taruskin says. “His music isn’t particularly Armenian. His models are 19th century Russian music like Borodin’s ‘Prince Igor’ and ‘In the Steppes of Central Asia.’ ”

Others insist that to call Khachaturian a Russian composer is to ignore certain aspects of his music. According to Serviarian-Kuhn, who says she has performed the Khachaturian Piano Concerto more than any living musician: “Rachmaninoff is Russian. Tchaikovsky is Russian. But when it comes to melody, Khachaturian is, completely down to the bone marrow, Armenian.”

(Khachaturian himself was conflicted about these labels, but a 1957 letter hints at the pragmatic composer’s own feelings on balancing music and heritage. “Bury me in Yerevan,” he wrote, “but bring the orchestra from Moscow.”)

Also to celebrate the composer’s 100th birthday, Delos is releasing “The Khachaturian Centennial Album” on Sept. 23, featuring all the music that will be performed by the Philharmonia of Russia and others in a Khachaturian evening at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 10.

The Philharmonia’s Orbelian, conductor of both the Delos CD and the Carnegie Hall concert, is among those who feel that this fall’s events could spark a new interest in the composer’s music. On the phone from Moscow, he says: “That’s the whole point of this centennial -- to bring his music, some of which has never been performed outside of Russia, to people’s attention.”

Audiences and critics may give these unheard Khachaturian works a listen, but there is a widely held view that his music is all flash and little substance.

According to Taruskin: “I don’t think people pay much attention to him now ... although I don’t think musicians have ever thought much of Khachaturian -- he was always a composer for the crowds.”

Orbelian acknowledges that audiences find the composer’s works accessible but insists: “There’s nothing naive about the music. The bombastic qualities are powerful means to an end. It’s not just noise for noise’s sake.”

Serviarian-Kuhn agrees: “His music is unique -- yet people want to compare it to other composers and say that he doesn’t have the meat, of say, Prokofiev.” She laughs. “But he never wanted to be a Prokofiev.

“I’m upset by the fact that he’s not performed more,” she adds. “But remember, Armenians are known as survivors. Khachaturian’s music will continue to be heard.”

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A Khachaturian season

‘Khachaturian,’ the film

Details: Oct. 17, 9 p.m.; ArcLight Cinemas, 6360 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood; $11; (323) 464-1514.

Also: Nov. 7-13; Laemmle Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills; $9; students, $7; children and seniors, $6; (310) 274-6869.

Sahan Arzruni, piano recital

Details: Sept. 28; Agajanian Hall, AGBU Manoogian-Demirdjian School, 6844 Oakdale Ave., Canoga Park; $20; students, $10; (626) 794-7942.

Grigorovich Ballet Company, ‘Spartacus’

Details: Saturday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m.; Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena; $26.25-$102; (626) 449-7360.