Violinist, leading musician of the London Symphony Orchestra Carmine Lauri was eagerly looking forward to his visit to Armenia. One of the most famous musicians in Malta was in Yerevan during these days within the framework of the “Days of Maltese Music in Armenia” program.
“It’s my first time in Armenia. And I have been looking forward to come here for almost a year. I had the pleasure of working with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra as a soloist twice in Malta last year. I loved the orchestra and enjoyed working with Sergey Smbatyan. I told them I want to come to play in Armenia. Finally, this is happening and I hope it will happen again many times’’,- Carmine Lauri noted.
The violinist stated that the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra is a fantastic collective; musicians are very professional and wonderful people. Smbatyan is also a great conductor with whom he enjoys working.
Carmine Lauri noted that he often performs contemporary music. He is also familiar with the works by Armenian composers and describes Khachaturian’s works as fantastic. He has not performed Violin Concerto by Khachaturian yet, but he has a great desire to do it. He says Khachaturian is the same for Armenians as Tchaikovsky is for the Russians.
During his Armenian concert, the violinist presented Violin Concerto in D major by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He noted that it is a very beautiful concerto, but hasn’t been performed a lot. The musician is performing it for the second time. He compares the Concerto with cinema music. It should be mentioned that Carmine regularly leads the LSO and has lead the orchestra in numerous recordings including music scores of movies, including Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Queen, The Danish Girl, Suffragette, Shape of Water and is often the featured violin soloist in many films such as ‘As you like it’ and ‘Joyeux Nöel’.
Carmine has performed concertos with many international orchestras including the LSO, LPO, the Czech Philharmonic and Czech State Phil of Brno, the Oxford Philharmonic, the Orquesta Municipal de Caracas, the MPO, The Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and others. Carmine was made an Associate and Fellow of the Royal Academy (ARAM, FRAM) for his achievements in his career and his talents were acknowledged by his country which bestowed upon him the National Order of Merit and is also the recipient of the 2015 Gold medal for the Arts.
Anahit GRIGORYAN
