Khachaturian wrote his first film score in 1934, the year he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. The film, Pepo, was itself distinctive, the first feature film to be made in the Armenian language. It was a simple folk-tale with a young teenage hero, and “Pepo’s song” was to become locally famous. The music of the Overture, bright and freshly scored, is immediately characterized by the rhythmic and melodic flavour later better known in Gayaneh. Secret Mission (1953) is a series of brief vignettes, recognizably film music, but which are less individual. Nevertheless, the jolly march called “The Pilot” is infectious enough and “The Ardennes” clearly generates tension, then produces an appealing lyrical idea on the violins, which is stamped with the composer’s melodic personality, while “Surrender” and the lively finale have some of the repetitive hyperbole to which Khachaturian too readily resorted throughout his career.
Admiral Ushakov (1952) brings a rather effective “Funeral” sequence, which after a brash opening is quite affecting; the following “Russian sailors in Naples” is rhythmically catchy in the manner of Kabalevsky. The most ambitious score here was written for Undying Flame (1956), a biopic of Giordano Bruno, the pantheist Italian philosopher and scientist whose radical ideas eventually brought him to the stake as a heretic. The suite is a series of atmospheric and semi-descriptive passages which make pleasing listening but no more than that. The “Dance before the Queen” (apparently Queen Elizabeth I of England) is rather engaging. Prisoner No. 217 (1945) concerns a German captive during the Russian invasion of 1941: the music is cleverly scored but again not really distinctive, although with the usual sinuous melodic appeal. There is a curiously Hebraic-sounding violin solo in the final section, which might become a hit if taken up by Classic fM.
In short Khachaturian’s film scores are somewhat conventional and no match for those of his contemporary, Shostakovich; however, admirers of the composer will find all the music here vividly played by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra under Khachaturian’s sympathetic countryman, Loris Tjeknavorian.'