Vahagn Aristakesyan
was born in Armenia. He began his musical education at the age of seven and studied violin in Yerevan until 1996. From 1992 to 1995 he played in the youth orchestra “Serenade”, with which he won first prize for chamber music at the 1995 Premio Valentino Bucchi competition in Rome. He continued his studies in 1996, taking violin and viola with Tibor Varga in Sion (Switzerland), and was soon appearing as soloist with the Orchestre de l’Académie Tibor Varga. Aristakesyan has been deputy section head of the second violins in the Basel Symphony Orchestra since 2000. In 2006, he was selected to be the leader of the Collegium Musicum Basel.

Trio Amani
The trio was founded in 2017 by violinist Marina Yakovleva, her fellow-vioinist and brother Mikhail Yakovlev and cellist Lev Sivkov. They chose the name “Trio Amani” in honour of the Russian composer Nikolay Amani (1872-1904), whose string trio they discovered in 2018 and premiered that year in Zurich.

After a highly successful concert series, Marina, Mikhail and Lev invited violist Vahagn Aristakesyan to join them on the present recording of chamber music for strings in various scorings from Russia and Switzerland. The trio presented this programme in 2019 in a series of concerts in the composers’ homelands.

The repertoire of Trio Amani comprises a wide variety of compositions for various formations, from duo to piano quintet.