Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich spent four holidays in Dilijan. During his visits, he composed his famous String Quartet No. 9, as well as music for the Soviet film “Hamlet.”

“I remember Shostakovich would always stay in Cottage #8,” recalls Yelena Mirzoyan. “There was a football field in front of it. One day, we had a football game. Arno Babajanyan was leading one group. Composer Rodion Schedrin, with his wife Maya Plistskaya, was leading the other. Shostakovich was the referee. And every time someone would hit the trees and apples would fall, he would get angry and assign a penalty.”

In 1965, world-famous British composer Benjamin Britten and his friend, singer Peter Pears came to Dilijan. Soviet Armenia was hosting the “Days of Benjamin Britten” and Dilijan was the composer’s main destination. During his stay, he composed a song cycle for high voice and piano and dedicated it to his friends, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and cellist and pianist Mstislav Rostropovich, who were also vacationing in Dilijan. Yelena Mirzoyan notes that Peter Pears later wrote in his memoirs that British composers would dream to have such a resort.

In the 1970s, people around the world came to Dilijan not only to rest and create but also to meet their colleagues and experience the cultural atmosphere of the times. “There is a recording where Georgian composer Felix Glonti confesses that, even though they already have a resort for Georgian composers in Borjomi, he preferred to come to Dilijan just to meet with composers Edward Mirzoyan, Arno Babajanyan, and Ghazaros Saryan. For him, Dilijan had a completely different atmosphere. Composers would come, exchange ideas, show each other their work,” recalls Yelena Mirzoyan.

Another famous guest of the resort was the founder of the modern Armenian school of painting, Martiros Saryan. Yelena Mirzoyan recounted a story about Saryan: “Every morning he used to stand on his balcony and say ‘This is amazing!’ Once, the cleaner came and told us that Saryan had lost his mind and kept repeating the same phrase every day. But of course that was not the case; he was so fascinated by nature that he kept repeating the same phrase every single day.”

The years in Dilijan were special not only for composers but also for their families and children. With a smile on his face, Professor Arshak Mirzoyan, a medical doctor and Edward Mirzoyan’s son, recalls his childhood memories in Dilijan. “I spent my whole childhood there, and they were happy days. For us, it was normal to meet Maya Plisetskaya on our way to the cafeteria. And I remember how Arno Babajanyan would gather all the children and tell stories. Now I understand how privileged I was.”