Mansurian's Concerto for mixed choir a cappella connects elements of a song cycle with traits of a choral cantata. Ten poems from different periods by Yegishe Tcharents 18971937 are set in a tonal language of simple beauty, based on modal lines but encompassing monophonic sparseness, contrapuntal settings and clusters alike. Despite the personal content of the poems, "their sound and pliant rhythm" offered the starting point for Mansurian. Ars Poetica 19962000 is a tribute to the beauty of the Armenian language and a writer whose symbolic importance for the country's cultural history transforms his lines into utterances of a collective national voice. While Tcharents is largely identified with his role as a legendary figure of antiSoviet activities in Armenia he died, aged 40, in a Stalinist prison in Yerevan Mansurian, who has read and admired him all his life, concentrates on poems dealing with the secrets of poetic expression and the "relationship between life and poetry". PRecorded 2003 PPersonnel: Armenian Chamber Choir conducted by Robert Mlkeyan