It’s easy to view Komitas’s life and music through the prism of tragedy. The Armenian musician and monk was one of 291 prominent figures who, in April 1915, were rounded up and deported to a prison camp by the Ottoman government. Although he was eventually released, he spent the last 20 years of his life in various psychiatric hospitals. Now his music – while mostly pre-dating these events – is widely regarded as a symbol of the Armenian genocide and Komitas himself as a martyr.

But he was more than that: someone who could transform the simplest folksongs of Armenia and Turkey into sophisticated European polyphony. And, in so doing, he invented a new national school of composition. Allegedly, after a 1906 concert, Claude Debussy knelt and kissed Komitas’s right hand, saying, ‘You’re a genius, Holy Father.’

Listening to this double-disc set one can see his point. Each of these song transcriptions reveals haunting music, all the more so for its very strangeness. We hear stops and starts, drones overlaid with circling, hypnotic melodies – the trappings of folk. We hear a Brahmsian waltz in ‘Shoushiki’; a Debussian grasp of colour most obviously in ‘Kele-Kele’; and that mastery of polyphony dignifying a simple song such as ‘Het u Aradi’. Pinning it all together, though, is an emotional rawness: these are pieces that get you in the gut. And, bar one or two exceptions, they are deeply mournful.

The Hugo Wolf Quartet are equal to this chameleonic music: listen to how nimbly they transition from ‘Haberban’, a robust work that begins much like Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, to the bare, folk-drenched world of ‘Keler Tsoler’. But it’s the piano music that leaves the deepest mark, showcasing the glossy sound of Arthur Aharonyan. His is an understated approach, highlighting the works’ fragility. More importantly, it’s an approach that allows space to breathe, demonstrating that, in this music, the silences carry as much weight as the notes.