|
|
Harmonia
Music of Eastern Europe
$16.99
Two generations of musicians celebrated for their performances of the music of their Eastern European homelands join forces to explore the shared musical roots of the culturally rich territories east of the Danube, from Hungary and Romania to Croatia, Slovakia and western Ukraine. Notes include song histories and translations.
Musicians:
Walt Mahovlich: accordion
Alexander Fedoriouk: cimbalom, buben, voice
Beata Begeniova: vocals
Marko Dreher: violin, viola, tamburica
Andrei Pidkivka: sopilka, nai, tylynka, drymba
Adam Good: bass, guitar
|
|
"Harmonia is a six-piece led by accordeonist Walt Mahovlich, with Ukrainian cimbalist Alexander Fedoriouk, Andrei Pidkivka also from Ukraine on sopilka, tylynka and more, and Marko Dreher of Croatian musician parentage on rich-toned violin, viola and tamburica, over Adam Good's double bass, with the splendid lead vocals of young Slovak Beata Begeniova. All leading players in their own right in the US and back home, their musicianship and ensemble sound are impeccably sensitive. Never going for hackneyed crowd-pleasers, their interesting material, well-described in the booklet notes, comes from the repertoires and collection of the band's members. A particular gem is Begeniova's singing of the slow Slovak wedding song for the bride's leaving of her parents' home, Ej, V Komori Na Ladi." - Andrew Cronshaw, fRoots
"It is hard to describe Harmonia's music without sounding overblown, but the adjectives called to mind are no exaggeration. Brilliant. Lush. Dazzling. Soulful. All true, but still insufficient to evoke the passion and exhilaration, the melancholy and triumph, that a Harmonia performance evokes. Each individual musician is stunningly virtuosic; together, they weave a complex layer of richly textured sound...." - SingOut "Harmonia...[blends] Hungarian, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Croatian influences. The 7-piece ensemble uses instruments as varied as accordion, upright bass, violin, cimbalom, taragot, and pan flute, its rhythms move in a heartbeat from mellow and dissonant to loud and frenzied. Imagine the energy of the Pogues, only with a female singer and no drummer. Beata Begeniova, from eastern Slovakia, has a voice as beautiful as her smile. A joy by any standard." - Cleveland Scene "Harmonia...is out to prove that there's more going on in the area of Central and Eastern European music than polka. There's a great richness of musical forms between the Carpathians and the Danube and in the Balkan regions--the csardas, halgato, kolomyka, doina, hora and invirtita, for example....the songs on the CD are traditional, but Harmonia members are not content to merely interpret older material. Fedoriouk has been writing original pieces for the band, most recently a composition entitled Geamparale [on The Art of the Cimbalom, Traditional Crossroads CD 4314]. It employs the 7/16 meter of a Romanian dance, on top of which Fedoriouk has written an original melody and orchestrated it for six instruments. Now he's working on a piece that has a Balkan flavor, based on a particular scale, that will feature improvisation by several instruments. 'I want to expand research in the old traditional music, but also to push the boundaries with new compositions and new arrangements', said Fedoriouk....." - Harvey Pekar, Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
|
Please note!
Most CDs have been
imported from Europe or Asia.
They are not all
shrink-wrapped, and I am not
going to con you by wrapping them
here just to make you think they
have been sterilized in America.
We guarantee that the CDs and the
contents are all brand new and in
perfect condition. Whenever I
can, I use recycled shipping
materials. They may not look as
pretty on the outside, but they save
money and keep the trash dumps a
little bit emptier.
|