Kashkashian is speaking specifically about the Spanish and Argentine songs she recently recorded with pianist Robert Levin; the new ECM disc is called Asturiana.

She has no concrete idea, really, why she is so deeply affected by Carlos Gustavino’s “Se equivocó la paloma” or Alberto Ginastera’s “Triste.” She does know that she has been attracted to song, especially folksong, since childhood, when she would listen to her father sing Armenian songs.

For several years, Kashkashian and Levin have been performing French songs, Armenian songs, contemporary songs, North and South American songs, and Spanish songs, all alongside the standard repertoire they play in concert. Kashkashian also found ways to insinuate folk songs into her work in new music, an example being her 2002 ECM recording of Luciano Berio’s Voci and other works, of which most were inspired by Sicilian folksong.

Kashkashian’s ECM discography is dominated by such new-music names as Berio, Kurtág, and Mansurian, as well as such earlier new-music statesmen as Hindemith and Bartók. Her interest in the essentially romantic songs of Falla, Granados, Ginastera, Gustavino, and Montsalvatge may seem unexpected if you’re not familiar with the wider range of work she performs in concert (recitals are much easier for a solo violist to come by in Europe than in the United States). But don’t forget that Kashkashian and Levin have made a highly acclaimed 2000 CD of the Brahms sonatas, and that even in new music the viola can’t help coming across as an essentially lyrical instrument.

When it comes to songs, says Kashkashian, “there’s a wonderful and endless supply of fantastic material. It was incredibly difficult to make the final selection for our Asturiana CD. We have at least as much material that we didn’t use. So one thing we decided to do was present some composers that string players don’t know. Xavier Montsalvatge, Carlos Gustavino—people who have a lot to do with the voice know them, but for string players they are fairly new concepts. We also tried to pick a stylistic and emotional spread, things we thought would really balance each other out. And also we just followed the heart, doing what we really can’t not do.”

The pieces had to work well as viola music, too. Left behind were items with a narrow range whose emphasis was on articulation of the text. “Those songs will not be enlightened by a transcription,” she says.

And yet Kashkashian was able to “cheat” a bit in pieces she couldn’t bear to part with.

For example, when Paul Kochanski transcribed Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas (the transcription is usually re-titled Suite populaire espagnole), he left out the second movement, “Seguidilla murciana,” because it seemed too static without its text.

Kashkashian put it back in. “It needed some kind of articulation, some kind of substitution for the text,” she says, “so I took the vocal line and started to play with it, doing a lot of octave jumping, and using various colors and textures, pizzicato, ponticello, some chordal work as well, just to add weight to balance out the lack of the original text.

“Hopefully, the kinds of freedoms that one takes will open up something transparent, and not make the music more murky. That’s true whether you play Bach or Brahms, or Stravinsky or Gubaidulina. You need to put yourself in the skin and in the context of the composer.”

Kashkashian plans to publish her arrangements of this material, as soon as she stops agonizing over how much of herself to put on the page. “My big problem when I edit anything,” she says, “is how much of my own fingering and bowings and expressive markings do I want to put down? That’s a tough one, because I’d like to see everyone do it differently.”

Spoken like a true teacher, and Kashkashian currently teaches at the New England Conservatory. “One of the things I try to get across to my students, and something that’s very important to me,” she adds, “is that there must be constant change within the sonority of any given sound.

“What doesn’t get discussed much is what happens during a note and what happens between notes—how you transform one sound into the next—and how much information is contained within any given pitch. One learns that best by listening to singers. I listen a lot to singers, whether for this Spanish project or any music I’m playing. If I play a Brahms sonata, I’m going to listen to his songs and the Liebeslieder Waltzes.

“Vocal music is my inspiration and my basis, always.”