Balkan Spirit

19 tracks - MP3 192 Kbps - RAR 131 Mb

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This is an entrancing CD, with dances, laments, and feast-day songs linked in a slow-quick-slow structure. Perhaps as an implicit tribute to Montserrat Figueras, there are no vocal numbers, but the musicians Savall has assembled from the relevant countries display a wonderful range of virtuosity. It’s a shame the strictly musicological information in the book is so inadequate, because much could have been made of the variety of guises in which the flute and the fiddle make their appearance. In the hands of Bora Drugi´c, the humble frula – Serbia’s answer to the recorder – can get the joint jumping in a rollicking dance, or call up wistful nostalgia; on the longer, end-blown kaval, Nedyalko Nedyalkov can evoke the immense sadness of a Gypsy lament, or weave dainty patterns in a Cretan circle dance. Peyo Peev’s nimbleness with the bowed Bulgarian gadulka is matched by Derya Türkan’s on the kemanche spike-fiddle. Gyula Csík’s cimbalom finds its Middle-Eastern answer in the plucked kanun. And as one might expect, the violin proper surfaces all over the place. At the end Savall plays a newly-composed elegy on the soprano viola da gamba for a woman who has left the village to get married in the big city: there could be no more moving testament to the wife who has gone on ahead.

Michael Church

contents:

1. Borin Cocek (Serbie)
2. Doina, hora (Roumanie)
3. Ta xyla & Çeçen kızı (Grèce & Turquie)
4. Chichovata (Nord-ouest Bulgarie)
5. Der makām-ı Hüseynī Sakīl-i Ağa Rıżā (Turquie)
6. Zajdi, Zajdi (Serbie). Aleksandar Sarijevski
7. Sborenka (Dobrudzha, Nord-est Bulgarie)
8. Azt hittem hogy minden könnyem (Tsigane)
9. Kovni (Tradition Kurde)
10. Cuando el Rey Nimrod (Séfarade)
11. Sousta (Grèce)
12. Galabovska Ruchenitsa (Thrace, Sud-est Bulgarie)
13. Bilijana (Pirin, Sud-ouest Macédoine)
14. Ciocârlia / Seva. Bora Dugić d’après Angheluş Dinicu, Paris 1889
15. Suite – Doina, Purtata, Hora ka la kaval (Roumanie-Tsigane)
16. Sanie cu zurgălăi (Tsigane). Richard Stein
17. Suite – Hora de ascultare, Hora mare, Hora lui Dragoi (Roumanie-Tsigane)
18. Vrcavo Kolo (Tradition de Serbie centrale)
19. Pastirska Elegija (Serbie). Version musicale Bora Dugić et Jordi Savall

Mihailo Blam, Gyula Csik, Vilmos Csikos,

Valeri Dimchev, Bora Dugic, Tcha Limberger,

Slobodan Prodanovic, Dimitri Psonis, Moslem Rahal,

Zacharias Spyridakis

Hespèrion XXI

dir. Jordi Savall