A Concert To Remember: Babayan Wows With ‘Songs’
Sergei Babayan continues his breathtaking exploration of the idea of melody in his monumental SONGS programme, amazing his audiences worldwide. His recent performance of the programme at La Grange aux pianos in the French Indre region had critics rave and the audience beg for more. Read the full review from La Nouvelle République here:
“A Concert To Remember
The pianist Sergeï Babayan caused a sensation at La Grange aux pianos, in Chassignolles, on Sunday 14
An hour before the concert, on Sunday, 14 September 2025, the master is still whipping the century-old Steinway, as if to train it. The hall of La Grange aux pianos, in Chassignolles (Indre), is full. We are waiting for Sergei Babayan, he is getting dressed, here he is at last.
Babayan at Split’s Piano Loop Festival, 16 September 2025
A quick greeting to the audience, he sits down in front of the instrument and launches himself immediately, cutting short the applause of welcome. Music above all. That of Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and many others, slowly going back to the Romantic era, making a stopover in Viennese music, taking the paths of jazz and more contemporary repertoires. Breathtaking pianissimos. Fortissimos to make the hair stand on end. An incredible sound, which shakes us to the core and delivers to us on a platter the flesh and soul of the selected pieces.
Sergei Babayan plays with his eyes closed and this is gradually the attitude that the audience chooses to imitate. Nothing to see here, he seems to say, everything to hear! Manuel Maria Ponce, Rachmaninoff, the strength of the works imposes itself every second, the melodic power of Liszt, otherwise often difficult to grasp among all its harmonic richness, suddenly imposes itself as evident.
Two hours of an unforgettable concert
The audience is subjugated, carried away. The performer slips away in front of the sound and we find ourselves next to Over the rainbow, a piece by Harold Arlen, transcribed for piano by the great Keith Jarret, sublime! For two hours, a century of music unfolds, taking us from the romantics to the moderns. Babayan seems at ease in every single register, in tune with each era. By the time it comes to Gershwin's Oh Lady, be good, the audience is entirely conquered, on the verge of emotional implosion. We ask for more several times, we try to hold him back a little longer, but the interpreter will only come back to greet and thank, hand on heart. He has given everything, we received everything. We would like to stay another hour listening to him, but that is forgetting that before offering us this concert, he played for hours to set up Cyril Huvé's Steinway; seeking, nothing else, apparently, than to share with us in this decisive moment his passion for music, for musics, The Music, which seems to irrigate every atom of his body.”
(c) Yvan Bernaer, La Nouvelle République
Read the original French version here.
