Erik Mirzoyan, a 21-year-old Armenian clarinetist, is a member of the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra, or PCYO, an 80-piece ensemble created as a central element of a classical music festival held every September in Tsinandali, Georgia . He was born in Moscow. During this year’s festival, Mirzoyan had a desire to play the Mozart clarinet quintet, so he recruited four of his fellow PCYO musicians to perform it with him.
For the viola part, he enlisted Humay Hacizade, a young woman born in Azerbaijan, a country that has been in bloody conflict with Armenia for more than 30 years. Despite the enmity of their nations, there is a warm camaraderie between the two musicians, a consequence of making music together. On the evening of Sept.
3, the Mozart quintet was performed for the public in a free outdoor concert. Early the next morning, a Russian air attack killed seven people in Lviv, Ukraine. It so happened that one of the two violinists Mirzoyan had invited to play in the quintet was Oleh Yuzkiv, who was born in Lviv.
Yuzkiv is well aware of Mirzoyan’s Russian heritage. Their mutual friendship, also formed through musical collaboration, remains intact. “It was amazing,” Mirzoyan says of the quintet performance.
“We combined all the countries and had this immediate connection. There was no thought of nationality, and in music there never should be. We should play music to heal people and touch the finest strings of their souls.
” Cultural diplomacy is precisely the reaso.