Armenian pianist Mikael Ayrapetyan has become internationally recognized for performances of his country’s music all over the world with his Secrets of Armenia project. Ayrapetyan’s piano cycle A Whole in 12 is special to his artistic life, being both a deeply personal and universal story told in scenes that range from inner peace and feelings of endless space, to all-consuming creative impulses and the magic of Christmas, contrasting vibrant textural complexity with profoundly expressive lyricism.

Mikael Ayrapetyan is a pianist, composer, producer, and teacher, as well as a researcher and public figure. Through his Secrets of Armenia project, which began during his studies at the Moscow State Conservatory, he has done much to popularize Armenian classical music. The performing traditions of Konstantin Igumnov, Samuil Feinberg and Lev Oborin are reflected in Ayrapetyan’s performances of the extensive Armenian piano heritage.

REVIEWS:

Pianist-composer Mikael Ayrapetyan (b. 1984) strays into melodic territory with his own sensibilities and it all may give you pleasure I trust, depending on what your ear wants to hear. I speak of his A Whole in 12, Miniatures for Piano (Grand Piano 809), which presents to us 12 lyrical solo piano works that have a rhapsodistic lyricism and a soaring sort of introspection[.]

It is all very tonal, and fine for that. It is thick with chordal accompaniment throughout, the left hand offering up broken arpeggiated, sometimes near-Alberti chordal patterns quite pianistic, a constant factor. I find myself listen to the left hand and finding it interesting in itself as I hear this album repeatedly.

-- Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review