Astrig Siranossian - Duo Solo - BBC Music Magazine

In this imaginative recital, the French cellist Astrig Siranossian honours her Armenian heritage. The first half is built around Bach’s G major Cello Suite, its movements interspersed with Armenian folk tunes, most of which she sings as she plays.

Another folk song – a longer, darker lament – leads into the colossal three-movement Sonata by Kodály. Siranossian’s note implies that she plays this 1915 work as a kind of memorial to the Armenian Genocide of the same year; she certainly sustains a remarkable level of intensity throughout a performance that’s even more fiercely lyrical than that of her hero János Starker.