Songs of The Caucasus

In this first ever survey of the music of this war torn region, Michael Church lifts the veil on a vibrant musical tradition. The small but troubled Republic of Chechnya is a member of the Russian Federation, located in the North Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas. With a population of a little more that one million, its fierce fight for independence has kept it in the news and kept visitors out. A beautiful but harsh mountainous landscape has made for a traditionally hard and resilient people whose culture has rarely reached the outside world. Michael Church has recorded and compiled the stunning music on this disc partly in Chechnya itself and was held by the Russian police for his efforts. Some of the tracks are love songs and circle dances, others are living history, accompanied by balalaika, violin, drum and accordion, these songs celebrate heroes and denounce genocidal crime.(Amazon)

This first volume of a five CD collection that will be the first ever complete survey devoted to the composer's songs offers a substantial amount of previously unrecorded material. Shostakovich's vocal works were written during a turbulent and poignant time for the composer. The Communist Party Committee's cataclysmic decree in 1948 forced him to write music accessible to the broad masses ……..

Anton Rubinstein wrote his Persian Songs in 1854, while on tour in Germany. The source was a recent collection of poems by Friedrich von Bodenstedt, who advertised them as translations from the work of the Azeri poet Mirza Shafi Vazeh (Mirzə Şəfi Vazeh, 1805-52), with whom he had studied during his travels to the Caucasus. Tchaikovsky was later commissioned to produce a singable Russian translation of the German texts, but he disputed the provenance, maintaining that Bodenstedt, whom he had met, did not know Persian and simply invented the poems (Bodenstedt, as it happens, had by then decided to claim the authorship of these bestselling poems for himself). The 20th century saw a revival of Vazeh’s work, and an examination of the original texts showed that Bodenstedt had indeed translated them, although his versions were much more effusive than Vazeh’s.

The Armenian monk Soghomon Soghomonian, better known by his priest’s name of Komitas, collected hundreds of folksongs around 1900 during the course of his travels through the Armenian highlands between Van Lake, the Black Sea and the southern Caucasus. These songs, handed down orally over the centuries, express all the archaism of this ancient people’s unmistakeable culture – a culture than was nearly extinguished in the genocide of the Armenians during the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917…

Chip Taylor - Block Out The Sirens Of This Lonely World [2CD] (2013) {Train Wreck Records}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 321 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 145 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 25 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2013 Train Wreck Records / Rootsy | TW047
Rock / Folk Rock / Americana

Insightful and brooding album from one of America’s finest and long standing singer songwriter’s. Does rock and roll belong to youth? Chip Taylor, in the 1960s, was in the thick of it, penning such hits as ‘Wild Thing’, which was subsequently made famous by the Troggs. Chip has come a long way since then and now he has produced a new album, 'Block out the Sirens of this Lonely World', a wildly unique and intimate statement by a man who has entered his eighth decade.

Gergiev's is a Rite of Spring with a difference. He stresses the primitive barbarism of Stravinsky's groundbreaking score–the strange wheezings of the winds, the wild yawps of the tubas, and the deep rumblings of the bass drum. It's a Rite that stands out at a time when so many internationalized western orchestras give the piece an overlay of sophisticated polish that can rob it of the shock factor that drove the audience at the Paris premiere to riot. There are also numerous personal touches that can be controversial, such as the pause before the final chord, which may bother some but which work in the context of the interpretation. Gergiev's Rite faces strong competition from recorded versions by Markevitch, Dorati, Monteux, and Stravinsky himself, but it's definitely among the top choices. The Scriabin's less compelling, though still fascinating. Gergiev's approach tends to sound sectional, as the overall line is subordinated to momentary thrills. –Dan Davis