Ani Aznavoorian’s family-made cello enchants Seattle audiences

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With its roster of several dozen internationally prominent musicians, the just-concluded 2024 edition of the Summer Festival presented by the Seattle Chamber Music Society involved a de facto summit of priceless string instruments in action. The ‘Marsick’ Stradivari of 1715 played by James Ehnes made the most frequent appearances: the star violinist, who has also served as SCMS artistic director since 2011, took part in all twelve of the festival’s main concerts, along with several related events such as free performances in the park.

But an instrument less than a quarter-century old made a remarkable impression of its own whenever Ani Aznavoorian was among the cast. Her bio invariably states that she ‘proudly plays on a cello made by her father Peter Aznavoorian in Chicago’. The American cellist demonstrated its full, warm sound and versatility in the three programmes comprising the last week of the month-long festival.

During a talk-back following the festival’s closing concert, Aznavoorian shared the origin story of her beloved instrument. Her father had become dissatisfied with his career as a chemist and decided to ‘follow his bliss’ by changing tack and enrolling in the Chicago School of Violin Making to learn the luthier’s art.

‘He makes violins, violas and cellos. He made this cello in 2000 with me in mind, since I was borrowing an instrument at the time,’ Aznavoorian said. ‘You never know when it can be taken away, when the owner will decide to sell it. We both knew that if it wasn’t up to par, I wouldn’t play on it and that would be fine. But it showed potential right away. Here I am, 24 years later, and I’m really happy with it’. 

The letter ‘A’ was carved in the scroll to incorporate the family name, but Aznavoorian likes to think of it as a personal initial for ‘Ani’. She had been steered in the direction of cello at the age of three. The family was passionate about classical music: her brother had already taken up violin — father Peter’s own favourite instrument — while her sister Marta had gravitated to piano, so Ani was assigned cello to complete the domestic trio.

The audience had just had an opportunity to hear how well her cello blends with historic instruments in the work chosen to close the festival, billed as ‘the world’s largest chamber music party’. Aznavoorian had been joined by Ehnes (with his Strad) and Jonathan Vinocour (principal viola with the San Francisco Symphony, who plays a 1784 Lorenzo Storioni) in an enthralling account of Mozart’s Divertimento in E-flat major, K563. ‘Divertimento’ is one the repertoire’s great misnomers for this substantial, wide-ranging, innovative string trio, which includes the most extensive part Mozart ever wrote highlighting the solo cello.

Aznavoorian is also a champion of new music. Earlier in the week, she and Vincour, with violinist Alexander Kerr, performed Merge, a 2019 string trio by the young American composer Kyle Rivera that incorporates inspiration from ‘narrative sculpture’ and meteorological data in response to a devastating Texas hurricane.

Meanwhile, Aznavoorian showed off her cello’s capacity to voice yearning as well as to take part in robust, quasi-symphonic ensemble in performances of two works by Robert Schumann: the Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70, and the Piano Quintet (the latter during the course of an experimental programme, ‘Tasting Notes’, which paired festival musicians with local celebrity chefs tasked with designing menus around each movement of the Schumann. A true musical feast.