A new Armenian piano talent is born: Lilit Hayrapetyan among the winners of GeneralBass (BMIPC 2026) by Carlo Coppola
The live phase of the prestigious Baroque Music International Piano Competition "GeneralBass" (BMIPC 2026) has come to a close in Yerevan. From July 1 to 7, young pianistic talents from different musical traditions and continents faced off under the attentive eye of an international jury.
The competition, organized by the Art Academy Paronyan — a member of the Alink-Argerich Foundation as well as of WPTA Armenia — is under the artistic direction of Izabella Paronyan, a pianist and educator, author of the teaching text Magic Piano, founder of the Academy, and President of WPTA Armenia. The project's co-founder and coordinator is Davit Davtyan, while the organizing committee is led by the young and dynamic pianist Taron Jaghatspanyan.
Among the three winners of the First Prize, Lilit Hayrapetyan stood out — a very young performer from the Armenian capital, daughter of the celebrated jazz musician Vahagn Hayrapetyan, a pianist, singer and composer honored with the title of Honored Artist of the Republic of Armenia, a historic voice of Armenian jazz who made his name between Yerevan, New York and New Orleans. Lilit received a score of 96 and won First Prize alongside Prapti Najuru (India–United Arab Emirates) and Mark Minasyan, also Armenian. The Jury's Grand Prize went to Erik Byurkland (United Arab Emirates) and Giorgi Mzhavanadze (Georgia).
The international jury — composed of Oleg Poliansky (Germany/Ukraine), Valerian Shiukashvili (Georgia), Anna Saradjian (Armenia/Canada), Aleksandar Serdar (Serbia/Slovenia), Francesco Cipolletta (Italy), Pablo Galdo (Spain) and Yakov Katsnelson (Russia) — judged technique, interpretation and stylistic fidelity to the Baroque repertoire with extreme rigor.
What particularly captivated the panel was the suppleness of touch that distinguished the young pianist's performance: a mature tonal sensitivity capable of drawing from the keyboard a range of dynamic nuances unusual for her age, evoking qualities typical of the harpsichord. But it was above all the psychological personalization of the piece performed and interpreted by Lilit — titled "Les Roseaux" (The Reeds), drawn from the Treizième Ordre of François Couperin's Troisième Livre de pièces de clavecin (1722) — that struck the audience and the jury most deeply. Marked by the tempo indication Tendrement, et sans lenteur, the piece paints an atmosphere at once extraordinarily bucolic and poetic, which the pianist managed to render with absolute fidelity, bringing out its architectural complexity and enriching it with a formal refinement that was never trivial, bar after bar.
This is an achievement that takes on particular significance when read through a genealogical lens: in Lilit's artistic trajectory, her father's musical legacy seems to extend, by different paths, confirming how the great Armenian piano school continues to produce performers capable of combining iron interpretive discipline with rare expressive intensity.
This is news that, though it comes from far away, deserves a place in our columns too: the worldwide Armenian community — of which the land of Bari and Puglia have preserved a precious memory and deep historical ties for a century — is enriched by a new young talent called to represent it authoritatively on the great international stages.
Carlo Coppola
