Ashot Danielyan brings a personal and expressive approach to the piano on “Make Classical Music Great Again,” an album featuring seven spontaneous piano improvisations. The pieces are not written in a traditional classical music form; rather, the composer lets them develop spontaneously in order to reflect various moods and moments in the evolution of the music using the different sounds of his instrument.
Opening with the five-minute “Beginning Of This April”, the album slowly rises from soothingly flowing piano riffs and such riffs become more intense before coming back to a more subdued ending. The shifts between these polarities create a sense of progression in the piece, like a feeling developing and settling in its own way.
“Cold Flowers” swaps the lighter moments for a more mournful style, with ethereal high pitches balanced with darker lows in order to find a balance between sadness and hope. While the contrast creates a lovely quietness in the piece, “Middle Of This April” brings back the idea of time passing and the subtle changes that can occur in the same season. Every piece evokes a different emotional ambiance, without the use of words to describe it.
“Warm May Night” is a warm and refreshing composition, which reminds the listener of a late night in May, serene yet full of beauty. Elsewhere, “Middle Of This July” gives the piano more space to develop, to allow its musical ideas to grow and change.
In “Make Classical Music Great Again,” Danielyan approaches improvisation as a means of capturing ephemeral emotions, not as a way to make a musical statement. The outcome is a very personal collection of pianos, asking the listener to slow down, focus in, and give every piece their own meaning. It’s a beautiful reminder that even the ordinary moments can have emotions that are worth holding on to!
