For the first time in history, a non-Armenian mixed choir has performed and recorded the entirety of Liturgy by the great composer and priest Komitas Vardapet. The performance by the extraordinary Latvian Radio Choir under the baton of conductor Sigvards Kļava, who are both now very familiar with Orthodox-inspired works (as demonstrated by their versions of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovski and Sviridov for Ondine), marked the 150th anniversary of Vardapet’s birth. The concert took place in a very solemn setting in Riga on September 20th, 2019, and the present recording required three years of preparation to mark the historic event – and it certainly does not disappoint! It features the full voices of the Latvian choir with their sensuality and extraordinary sense of harmonic progression, although it’s not as advanced here as it is in Rachmaninov’s works. This performance is incredibly beautiful and yet so simple and profound. Komitas completed his Divine Liturgy a few weeks before April 24th, 1915 – the date that marks the beginning of the rounding-up of Armenian intellectuals, including Komitas. It was a prelude to the large-scale genocide of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that ensued. While Komitas managed to survive the mass killings having been found and rescued, his soul had nonetheless been shattered and he spent the last twenty years of his life in a psychiatric hospital in Paris. This is an album to dive into head-first and return to multiple times to fully appreciate all its aesthetic energy, and some passages such as And the Mercy, Amen (track 21) and Lord, Have Mercy (track 25) are particularly poignant. The Divine Liturgy was originally composed for a male choir, however, Sigvards Kļava presents it here as an arrangement for mixed chorus (a practice that has been criticized in general so far and yet is incredibly impressive here) by Armenian Vache Sharafyan. Not to be missed! © Delos&Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz