"Man plays only where he is man in the full meaning of the word, and he is only fully man where he plays," Friedrich Schiller already knew. But in classical music of all things, whose instruments are supposed to be "played," the playful, the associative, the exploratory usually falls victim to standardized striving for perfection. Chouchane and Astrig Siranossian are quite different! The sisters of Armenian descent, who grew up in Lyon, are not only sensational virtuosos. As daughters of one of the leading experts on Armenian music, they learned early on how natural the connection between popular dance tunes, church and art music is in their homeland. A distinction between genres, as drawn in other musical cultures, hardly plays a role at the feet of Ararat. Accordingly, the two move light-footedly between simple traditional tunes and the refinement of Maurice Ravel's Duo Sonata.

Concert without intermission