International Piano Magazine, February 2020 Critic’s Choice. Review by Michael Church.

‘Iyad Sughayer has taken on a self-imposed challenge similar to Wee’s in his championing of largely forgotten music. Khachaturian is generally regarded as a stage and symphonic composer: the sparkling Toccata from 1932 is the only one of his piano works to make it into the repertory. Yet he wrote a great deal for piano, even if much of it was for didactic purposes like the Children’s Album from 1947 and Sonatina from 1959, both of which became staples of the Soviet education system. One may look in vain for the qualities of Schumann’s Kinderszenen in the former, but its pieces have fey charm, and in some cases echoes of folk song and dances from the composer’s native Armenia.

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      More interesting musically are Two Pieces (1926) and Poem (1927), composed while Khachaturian was still a student and suggesting that had he taken a different path – and not become a leading functionary – his music might have ended up less middle-of-the-road than it did. Several of the works Sughayer has chosen demand virtuosity, most notably the tumultuous Piano Sonata from 1961 which Emil Gilels enthusiastically espoused; with that piece this Jordanian-Palestinian player shines.’