Armenian musician Konstantin Orbelyan dies at 85

Soviet-Armenian renowned pianist and composer Konstantin Orbelyan has passed away in Los Angeles, United States, reports the Union of Composers website.

The great musician would celebrate his 86th birthday on July 29.

Born in Armavir, Russia in 1928, Konstantin Orbelyan developed  a special talent for music in his very childhood. From an early age, he studied at a special musical school for talented children under the Conservatory of Baku (Azerbaijan). But he was later expelled and moved to one of the villages of Nagrono-Karabakh after his parents became a victim of Stalin-era repressions.

At age fifteen, Orbelyan was invited to perform with the Armenian State Pop Orchestra; and subsequently became its conductor. Under his able direction for thirty-six years, the Orchestra rose to become one of the most accomplished of its kind. As a result, it came to represent Soviet jazz in more than thirty countries in Eastern and Western Europe, the Near East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. One of the Orchestra’s highlights was its American tour in 1975, which included twenty-five concerts in major cities from coast to coast.

Graduating in composition and piano from Edward Mirzoyan’s class of composition at Yerevan’s Komitas Conservatory in 1963, Orbelyan achieved early recognition for his String Quartet, winning the coveted First Prize at the International Competition in Moscow, where the chairman of the Competition’s panel of judges was the composer Dmitri Shostakovich. As a result, Orbelian’s rising talent and success were noted with great appreciation by the doyen of Armenian music of the time, Aram Khachaturian. Next followed the premiere of Orbelyan’s First Symphony in Moscow’s famous Tchaikovsky Hall by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra. For this Symphony, Orbelian was awarded the title “Laureate of the All-Union Competition.” His subsequent Celebration Overture achieved the same acclaim. His ballet symphony “Immortality” was composed in 1975 and performed by the Yerevan Opera and Ballet Theater. This work, too, won First Prize in an All-Union Competition devoted to music for the stage.

One of Orbelyan’s more recent compositions in the classical idiom, an orchestral miniature with solo piano, was written in memory of George Gershwin, and was first performed by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Orbelyan’s nephew, Constantine Orbelyan.

Biographic notes from Konstantin Orbelyan’s official website.