Page 6 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • November 7, 2012 Ridgewood Library presents afternoon of Haydn, Mozart, tango by John Koster The Harmonia Chamber Players offered a pre-hurricane concert at the Ridgewood Library, where the audience but obviously loved everything they heard. “Come on, there’s a storm brewing outside, let’s brew one in here too,” Elizabeth Kalfayan said, as, cello in one hand and bow in the other, she urged people from the audience to get up and dance the tango in the aisle. The audience, with one exception, held back, but they enjoyed the concept and the concert. The medley of tango music from Spain, Argentina, Romania, and the United States was the second half of the Oct. 28 concert where the theme was love. “It is out of love that we play this music, and I have decided that love is the only currency we should use here on Earth,” Kalfayan said. The philosophy behind the concert was that composers’ Violinist Larry Martino, cellist Elizabeth Kalfayan, soprano Ana Kouyoumdjian, and bassist Darla Coolman. love leads to music the audiences love. The concept worked in Ridgewood despite the storm warnings that had police cars parked along Maple Avenue to avoid possible submergence in the library parking lot. Flood baffles were lined up outside the entrance to Ridgewood Village Hall. New York City mass transit was shut down, but in the Ridgewood Library auditorium, listeners spent an hour of warmth in a world of the imagination. “Well, I think we’re taking Ridgewood by storm,” Kalfayan said. “I want to thank you all for coming out, and you get a badge of courage at the end of the program.” The first half of the program began and ended with two of the London Trio compositions by Franz Josef Haydn, arranged so Kalfayan’s cello and Larry Martino’s violin took the parts of the two flutes Haydn had orchestrated. “I’ll be the first flute, and Larry will be the second flute,” Kalfayan explained. The use of strings for flutes offered a new perspective on the warm, charming music. Soprano Ana Kouyoumdjian, Kalfayan’s sister, sang two arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “Ridenta la calma” and “Deh, vieni, non tardar” from “The Marriage of Figaro,” with flawless diction and a rich, full voice throughout the register. The central piece of the first half-hour was “ArmanDiana,” which Kalfayan composed based on her love for her son Armand and her daughter Diana. Darla Coolman on string bass joined Kalfayan and Martino while Kouyoumdjian sang vocalise as a component of the orchestra. “After I composed it, it felt like a journey from another realm,” Kalfayan said. “The irregular speed should remind us of a camel.” The imaginary caravan through a peaceful desert of white sand by moonlight, the West Asian influence, was an allusion to family history. Kouyoumdjian and Kalfayan were born in Romania to an Armenian family that fled the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The sisters fled Romania -- a country whose people and folk music they remember with affection -- when the communist government confiscated their family’s property. The second half of the program explored the permutations of the tango, an Argentinean dance of romance and defiance that reached Spain and became wildly popular in Europe just after the turn of the 20th century. The tango enjoyed a new wave of popularity in the 1960s. “When Ana and I were three years old, our father taught us to dance the waltz and the tango,” Kalfayan said. “Love happened when our father put us on his shoes and danced the tango with us. When we hear the tango and the waltz, we think of our father.” The medley included the “Tango in D” by Isaac Albeniz and “Jurame” (“Swear to Me”) by Maria Grever, both from Spain, “Por Una Cabeza” by Carlos Gardel from Argentina, “Tango Diana” by Kalfayan, and “Tango Tigan,” (“Gypsy (continued on page 15)