Professor of the Yerevan State Conservatory after Komitas
Georgi Kuzanov was born in Leninakan (now Gyumri, Armenia) on July 7, 1934. His parents were from Tbilisi. His father, Stepan Kuzanov, studied at the Piano Department of the Tbilisi State Conservatory for three years and later graduated from the Tbilisi Polytechnic Institute (now Georgian Technical University). In the multinational city, the Kuzanov family had close friendships with the famous composer Armen Tigranian and the famous poet Hovhannes Tumanyan. Among the friends of the family were future world-famous scientists, who had just begun to be interested in science — astrophysicist Viktor Ambartsumian and geneticist Sos Alikhanian. Georgi Kuzanov’s mother, Anahit Karakhanova, graduated from the Tbilisi Music College in vocal class. At a certain period, the Kuzanov family lived in Leninakan (Gyumri), where power engineer Stepan Kuzanov was sent (during his work, electrification was carried out in the city).
Then the family settled in Yerevan. The head of the family defended his PhD thesis and taught at the National Polytechnic University of Armenia for many years.
From an early age, little Georgi (for his family and close circle of friends — Zhora) showed bright musical abilities and a great interest in music, which was probably natural because his parents had a musical education and he constantly heard classical music performed by them (and later from gramophone records). The family often attended concerts of famous soloists, and performances at the Yerevan Opera Theatre, and tried not to miss musical events.
Georgi successfully studied piano at the Sayat-Nova music school, where his teacher was Susanna Danielyan. He easily absorbed musical material (with the help of his natural absolute pitch and excellent sight-reading), which made it possible to constantly expand his repertoire. The young man was a constant participant in the school’s annual concerts and received praise from teachers and school management and, of course, from his classmates. For many years, there was a photograph of young excellent graduate Georgi on the school Board of Honor (today in the same school, on another Board of Honor, in the first place is the name of Georgi Kuzanov carved in gold letters).
After graduating from the Sayat-Nova music school, Georgi entered the music college after Romanos Melikian to the class of the famous teacher Olga Babasyan.
In 1953, after successfully graduating from college, Georgi Kuzanov entered the Yerevan State Conservatory in two faculties: Piano Faculty, first in the class of Arno Babajanyan, and a year later — in the class of Professor Robert Andreasian, and Theoretical Faculty, in the class of Sergei Koptev. Koptev was the student of Yuri Tyulin, who was the chairman of the examination committee when Kuzanov was graduating from Piano and Theoretical Faculties.
It was impossible not to notice the talented student at the conservatory, and composer Edvard Mirzoyan suggested Kuzanov study composition at the same time. After two or three years of studying in Mirzoyan’s class, Kuzanov left classes. Looking ahead, we should note that this knowledge was useful in his further activities — in the implementation of keyboard arrangements of Grigor Yeghiazaryan’s ballet “Ara The Beautiful And Semiramis” and the vocal symphonic “Poem to Stalin” by Aram Khachaturian.
In 1958, Georgi Kuzanov graduated from the conservatory as a pianist. The final exam program also included the Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the interpretation of which left a great impression on the members of the examination committee. During his years of study at the university, student Kuzanov was awarded a personal scholarship named after Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
In 1962, Georgi Kuzanov graduated from the conservatory, now as a musicologist-theorist. And again Yuri Tyulin was invited to chair the commission.
Upon completion of his studies, Kuzanov began working as an accompanist at the Tchaikovsky Secondary Music School and the Music School after Sayat-Nova (until the 1990s), as well as at the Yerevan State Conservatory, where for many years he was the accompanist of the trumpet class of Professor M. Khachatryan.
These are the years of activity of Georgi Kuzanov as an accompanist and ensemble player — participant in concerts with various soloists, as well as plenums and congresses of the Union of Composers of Armenia, where he presented works of Armenian authors.
Violinist, and laureate of international competitions Jean Ter-Merguerian, after solo concerts with accompanist Kuzanov, offered him permanent cooperation. However, Kuzanov was in demand both as an accompanist and as a pianist who could freely play any piano arrangements, including operas and ballets, and as a theorist who understood the laws of dramaturgy of symphonic works, so he could not devote himself to collaboration with only one soloist.
For a short period, Kuzanov also worked as an accompanist at the Yerevan Opera Theater.
The following important fact from Kuzanov’s biography is that in the early 1970s, Aram Khachaturian invited him and the conductor Hakob Voskanyan to Moscow to change the musical and dramatic composition of the ballet “Gayaneh” for performance at the Alexander Spendiaryan National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre in Yerevan, Armenia. After about two months of hard work with the author and two invited musicians (virtuoso accompanist Kuzanov experimented at the piano), new musical “connections” were written, the necessary cuts were made, in a nutshell, a new (next) edition of the famous ballet was created. At the end of the intensive work, Aram Khachaturian presented Georgi Kuzanov with the piano score “Gayaneh” with the following inscription: “To very nice and talented Georgi Kuzanov as a keepsake of the joint work on “Gayaneh.”
Kuzanov was invited as a pianist-accompanist in Sochi at a rehearsal of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Swan Lake” Op. 20 with famous ballet soloists Natalia Dudinskaya and her stage partner Rubenov. One day Kuzanov forgot to take the ballet clavier to a rehearsal and had to perform all the musical material by heart, but no one guessed about it.
Concertmaster Georgi Kuzanov toured about three hundred cities of the former Soviet Union. He visited Canada (in 1977; among the soloists was Tatevik Sazandaryan), Mongolia, Poland, and other countries.
Notable was also the tour in Australia (1981) of the concert group with People’s Artists of Armenia, pop and jazz singer Raisa Mkrtchyan and folk singer Raffi Hovhannisyan, as well as the young singer Flora Martirosian.
Among the soloists accompanied by Kuzanov were famous instrumentalists: cellist Geronti Talalyan, violinists Hrachya Bogdanyan, Jean Ter-Merguerian, Hrachya Harutyunyan, and trumpeter Yuri Balyan. Among the singers were Gohar Gasparyan, Tatevik Sazandaryan, Lusine Zakaryan, Arthur Aydinyan, Artashes Hayryan, Vladimir Perchyan, and many others.
Georgi Kuzanov began teaching at the Yerevan State Conservatory in 1963 at the Department of Music Theory, where he taught a course on the analysis of musical forms, and later, in 1967-1968, at the Department of Chamber Ensemble (the department was headed by K. Kostanyan). Subsequently, he left the Theoretical Department and devoted himself entirely to teaching in the Performing Department.
In 1993, the USSR Higher Attestation Commission approved Georgi Kuzanov with the rank of professor.
Together with Karen Kostanyan, Georgi Kuzanov published the work “Methodological Commentaries on the Performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas” (Yerevan, 1987), and edited several music publications.