Eleonora Voskanyan

(1921-1999)

Honored Artist of Armenia, Professor of the Yerevan State Conservatory after Komitas

Eleonora Voskanyan was born on September 6, 1921, in Kharkiv into a family of art workers. Her mother, Sofya Voskanyan, was an artist of the Armenian Musical Drama Theater and played the piano (at a certain period she took private lessons from Heinrich Neuhaus in Tbilisi). Her father was from Western Armenia. He was from Khotorjurian refugees and survived the Armenian Genocide in 1915. He was an engineer. The maternal grandmother, Voskanyan-Cherkasova, had a conservatory education and was a famous singer. She was the first performer of the role of Amneris (from Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” opera) in Tbilisi. She also used to give vocal lessons. Her students were initially accompanied by her daughter Sofya, and later – by her granddaughter Eleonora, who was doing it quite well.

The girl was taught to play music by her mother, who became her first piano teacher. In Kharkiv, in the grandmother’s house where they lived, musical and dramatic evenings were constantly held. There were always present (in addition to all family members) well-known representatives of the Kharkiv intelligentsia. The youngest and most active participant in the evenings was Eleonora, who sang (her grandmother taught her to sing), danced (she graduated from a Character Dance school), and played the piano.

At an early age, Eleonora was accepted into a group of gifted children at the Kharkiv Conservatory. She continued her studies at the Kharkiv Conservatory with her favorite famous Kharkiv professor Ludwig Pfannenstiel. The professor was attending with great pleasure numerous concerts and performances of his pupils at the Kharkiv Philharmonic.

It was in 1937… Her father and grandparents were repressed (they were rehabilitated posthumously). It is impossible not to say about the desperate act of young Eleonora Voskanyan: at that turning point, when everything (including the piano) was confiscated after the arrests of her relatives, she wrote a letter to Stalin asking him to return the instrument.

The piano was returned to her. During that difficult period (1937), Professor Ludwig Pfannenstiel often invited Eleonora to dinner, and in 1941, when the bombing of Kharkiv began, already in old age, he rushed through the city to help his student evacuate to Tbilisi to her mother. And he, the intellectual in the pince-nez, with his last strength, pushed her into the train — the last one leaving the city. Eleonora Voskanyan remembered those lessons of human kindness and devotion for the rest of her life.

In Tbilisi, for about a year, she worked as a pianist at the Stepan Shahumian Armenian Theatre (now: Petros Adamian Tbilisi State Armenian Drama Theatre), and then she moved to Armenia, continuing her studies at the Yerevan State Conservatory. But in her memory was always the city of her youth, half–destroyed Kharkiv, covered with smoke from bombing. She remembered the confused faces of her friends and the pain and bitterness in the eyes of her dear professor. And so Eleonora Voskanyan made a decision — to volunteer for war.

She spent eight months on the front line (1942-1943). She was both an artist and a nurse and patiently endured the difficulties of front-line life. Eleonora took part in performances, sang, acted, and accompanied, repeatedly performing in Armavir, Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, and other settlements of the North Caucasus, performing for the soldiers of the advanced units of the North Caucasus front.

Since 1944, Eleonora Voskanyan has continued his studies at the Yerevan State Conservatory in the piano class of Georgy Sarajev. Eleonora Voskanyan retained the communication and the warm friendly relationship with him throughout her life. As proof, years later, there was a concert dedicated to the work of Professor Sarajev (1973), in which his works and piano arrangements were performed by students of the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School and students of the Komitas Yerevan State Conservatory, special piano class of Associate Professor Eleonora Voskanyan. When Eleonora was a student, Georgy Sarajev believed in a bright future for his pupil and he dedicated to her, as the first performer, one of his works («Toccata»).

Having completed her studies in 1945, Voskanyan stayed at the conservatory as an assistant in the Special Piano Department and then began teaching general piano, but her active concert life did not leave time for teaching activities. She was accepted into the Armenian Philharmonic as a soloist and interrupted her work at the conservatory for a certain period.

The first year Eleonora Voskanyan performed as a soloist with the Armenian Symphony Orchestra (conductors K. Saradzhev, M. Maluntsian, R. Matsov). The Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 by Camille Saint-Saëns, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 and Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and works by Leon Khoja-Einatoff were performed.

In 1945, together with Armenian musicians Pavel Lisitsian, Avet Ter-Gabrielyan, Arno Babajanyan, and others, Eleonora Voskanyan took part in a concert dedicated to Aram Khachaturian and his wife, composer Nina Makarova.

In 1946, a creative evening of Aram Khachaturian took place in Yerevan. Voskanyan was one of the first in the republic to perform his Piano Concerto in D-flat major, Op. 38 with the Symphony Orchestra of Armenia under the direction of Konstantin Saradzhev (the Violin Concerto in D minor that evening was performed by Leonid Kogan).

Years later, at one of Aram Khachaturian’s creative evenings, the soloist pianist, a few days before the concert, for some reason, was unable to perform and play the “Masquerade” suite based on the music to Mikhail Lermontov’s drama of the same name. Aram Ilyich remembered Eleonora Voskanyan’s performance of the Piano Concerto, called her, and asked her to help. Within a few days, Voskanyan learned and performed the Suite and became its first performer in Armenia. And again there were words of gratitude from Aram Khachaturian and his praise for her performance.

Eleonora Voskanyan has also performed extensively with cellists Gurgen Adamyan and Felix Simonyan; violinists Anahit Tsitsikyan, Levon Mamikonyan, Suren Hakhnazaryan. The concerts, along with classical music, featured works by contemporary authors, including ensemble works. Performances took place in cities of Armenia, the Soviet Union, and abroad.

In 1956, Eleonora Voskanyan began a long, world-famous collaboration with the Hero of Socialist Labor, People’s Artist of the USSR, and singer Gohar Gasparyan, which lasted eighteen years.

For eighteen years, Gohar Gasparyan and Eleonora Voskanyan with an extensive repertoire traveled almost the whole world — the capitals and cities of England, the USA, Canada, Mexico, France (1962, 1970), Japan (1958, 1964), Egypt (1962, 1966), Iran (1963, 1966), Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Poland, Greece, East Germany, Bulgaria, Finland, etc.

On January 25, 1964, Eleonora Sergeevna Voskanyan was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Armenia.

Since the mid-1980s, Gohar Gasparyan’s former student, Ellada Chakhoyan, asked Eleonora to become her accompanist during upcoming important performances. With accompanist Voskanyan, Chakhoyan won the title of laureate at the International Maria Callas Grand Prix Competition in Greece and at the International Vocal Competition in Barcelona.

Let us list the names of other soloists (singers and instrumentalists) with whom Eleonora Voskanyan performed: Maria Bieșu, Nar Hovhannisyan, Avak Petrosyan, Arshavir Karapetyan, Barsegh Tumanyan, Edvard Bagdasaryan, Georgi Ivanyan, Victor Khachatryan, Varduhi Khachatryan, Hovhannes Badalyan, Norayr Mnatsakanyan, Arpine Pehlivanyan (Beirut), Lily Chukaszyan (USA), Levon Aloyan, Zoya Petrosyan, and others.

Voskanyan’s acquaintance with the Bolshoi Theater soloist, People’s Artist of the USSR Maria Bieșu took place in the 70s at the All-Union Glinka Vocal Competition, held in Chisinau (E. Chakhoyan and E. Voskanyan participated in it). Then Maria Bieșu invited Eleonora Voskanyan to hold a joint concert, which was successfully performed in Chisinau.

Eleonora Voskanyan took part in the Decades of Armenian Masters of Arts in Hungary (in 1968), and Bulgaria (in 1970) and repeatedly performed at the Decades in Moscow. In 1973, with a group of Armenian artists, she participated in concerts for soldiers of the Soviet Army in the German Democratic Republic.

Eleonora Voskanyan performed in solo concerts of her brother, cellist Pavel Bzhikyan (director F. Bzhikyan became E. Voskanyan’s stepfather after 1937), and also performed piano duets with her daughter, pianist Nazeli Ivanyan. One of their last performances took place in 1990. The program included: «Adagio» by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Sonata in D for 4 hands, KV 381 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Suite No. 2, Op. 17, for two pianos by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Suite on Ashug Themes by Georgy Sarajev. (Ashugh: a singer-poet and bard who accompanies his song) Radio Armenia saved one hundred and ten stock recordings of accompanist Eleonora Voskanyan with various soloists.

Eleonora Voskanyan’s versatile talent was also evident in the teaching field. In 1950, she began teaching at the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School, and in 1962, she, once again, began her work at the Special Piano Department of the Yerevan State Conservatory. In 1976 she became Associate Professor, and in 1982 — Professor.

Among Voskanyan’s students in the Special Piano class are People’s Artist of Latvia Raffi Kharajanyan, Honored Artist of Armenia Anahit Nersesyan, Professor Sergei Kechek, Associate Professor Zhanna Baghramyan, Conservatory teacher Nazeli Ivanyan. Hasmik Ancharakyan, Zara Vardanyan, as well as Erna Gulabyan (USA), Karine Bagdasaryan (USA), Ashot Altunyan (USA), Edita Tatevosyan (Greece), and Nelly Khachatryan (Germany) are successfully working in various centers of musical education.

Eleonora Voskanyan lived a long and happy life with her husband, Honored Artist of Armenia, soloist of the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre

Georgi Ivanyan, who was also a participant in the Great Patriotic War. Their daughter Nazeli Ivanyan is the successor of the family’s musical traditions.

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