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Written in fRoots issue 252, 2004

EVA QUARTET
Harmonies
Kuker SN 990613 KA (2002)

VESSELINA KASAROVA
Bulgarian Soul
RCA Red Seal 74321 93658 2 (2003)

Some would insist that arranged versions of Bulgarian vocal music don’t compare to the village music from which they’re drawn. But despite the political machinations that went on within and around the state ensembles, many of those folk-choral pieces, particularly the very fine arranging works of Filip Koutev that led the “Les Voix Mystères” phenomenon with its heart-lifting surges of keening voices and thrilling intervals, remain awe-inspiringly beautiful music in their own right.

      With the end of communism and most of the state support of the folklore ensembles, there has been a diaspora of Bulgarian singers and instrumentalists around the world, and occasionally some pretty tacky treatments of the distinctive Bulgarian ensemble vocal sound. But there are still young singers taking it up, as is evidenced by the album by the four women of the Eva Quartet, recorded in Bulgaria for one of its new post-state-monopoly independent labels. With a set of new acapella arrangements and some folksong-based original composition, recorded without their predecessors’ characteristic church reverb, they sing well but aren’t yet in the same league as the great singers of the previous generation.

      Vesselina Kasarova is not a traditional singer but a leading international classical mezzo-soprano, and on Bulgarian Soul she delivers a set of folk songs, most of them well-known from the repertoires of the Koutev Ensemble and other folk choirs, saying “Many people don’t know my native land – I would like them to discover the Bulgarian soul”. In arrangements by Krassimir Kyurkchiyski she’s accompanied by a chamber orchestra, Bulgarian but comprising just western classical instruments, piano, and the choir Cosmic Voices From Bulgaria, who can deliver the folk-rooted style of their antecedents. Kasarova is a fine singer in a classical style, but the result, while impressive, doesn’t touch the thrill of the best of the folk choirs.
      But it isn’t toe-curlingly off-target like, say, Kiri Te Kanewa singing standards. It effectively converts the repertoire to substantial contributions to the classical canon. Songs such as Kalimanku, Denku and A Little Lamb Was Bleating (the song made famous by the great Nadka Karadjova) emerge as akin to and at least on a par with, for example, another folksong-arranged opus that's much fêted in classical circles, Joseph Canteloube's arrangement Songs Of The Auvergne. Given that it’s on a major classical label, this could perhaps, and certainly should, enter similarly into classical consciousness. But if that audience’s awareness of Bulgaria stopped there and didn’t venture into the folk choirs, great instrumentalists, and the village music from which it all derives, they’d be missing out on some of the world’s greatest music.
      Kuker Music is at www.kuker-music.com


© 2004 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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