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Written in fRoots issue 302/303, 2008
 

LADO ENSEMBLE ORCHESTRA
Polke I Drmeši – Dances From North-Western Croatia
Aquarius CD 171-07 (2007)

Teta Liza & Lado
Aquarius CD 174-07 (2008)

These two most recent releases, the latest in the long discography of Croatia’s national folk dance ensemble Lado that stretches back nearly sixty years, feature the playing of its fifteen-member folk-instrument orchestra.

      The band members come from across Croatia, and it’s part of their job to cover all Croatia’s traditional instruments between them, but for Polke I Drmeši the focus is on dance tunes from the regions around Zagreb and towards its borders with Slovenia and Hungary, and their instrumentation is three fiddles and a full tambura ensemble plus clarinets, cimbalom, ocarina and flute. The dance music of north-west Croatia doesn’t have the eastern sound of more easterly parts of the Balkans, and its rhythms are duple or quadruple, not asymmetric. But these guys’ full-time profession is playing virtually every day, largely for dancing, and they’re impeccable at it, delivering plenty of foot-impelling lift.

      Teta Liza & Lado is a promising departure for Lado, using their resources to reach out and work with a traditional singer. 84-year-old Elizabeta Toplek, known affectionately by the children of her local primary school as “Teta Liza” (Auntie Liza), isn’t a member of the ensemble. She’s a well-known life-long carrier and performer of the songs of her region, Međimurje, Croatia’s northernmost county tucked between the borders of Slovenia and Hungary and nearly touching Austria. Lado’s director invited her to sing with the orchestra on a CD of arrangements of songs from her repertoire.
      Liza’s voice is strong, not audibly diminished by age – she has the look of one who might be described as ‘redoubtable’ - and her style is direct and unornamented except for touches of spirited portamento and slight vibrato. There are sadly no booklet notes about the songs, just the lyrics in Croatian, but one can hear the mix of peoples in the region they’re from – quite a few have a Hungarian feel, others lean more in a Slovenian or Austrian direction - and the band, which for this project is regrouped into a 3-fiddle, clarinet, cimbalom and bass sextet, plus a marching brass band on some tracks, treats them accordingly in arrangements by cimbalist Alan Kanski.

      www.aquarius-records.com


© 2008 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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