Feature: A Whole World of New Music       Back to Features Page

A Whole World of Music - click to play 

Although claims that Classical World has exhausted the European repertoire would be premature, there are definitely people out there looking for something a little different. Perhaps you've always had a passion for a particular country's music, or maybe you've always meant to get round to listening to something from a little further afield than the Northern Hemisphere. Whatever your reasons, Classical World makes it easy to sample whatever you want from wherever you want, and hopefully proceed to buy it! So this discovery concert presents some choice recordings ranging from the strictly ethnomusicological to the fusion of genres so many people love.

1) Liberian Acrobatic Dance 
This recordings is taken from the Liberian performance at the first Pan-African festival, held in Algeria in 1969.  The infectious energy of the players' drumming and chanting spur on the dancers to ever more impressive leaps and somersaults.  This recording is one of many in our first batch with a real sense of occasion, capturing the ambient excitement perfectly!

2) The Red Army Chorus and Orchestra, Soviet National Anthem
 
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia reverted to its national anthem of old, a piece based on an operatic excerpt by Glinka.  However, few people felt it was, for want of a better word, as anthemic as Anatoly Alexandrov's classic Soviet work, and on the order of Putin himself it was reinstated as the Russian national anthem.  It's not hard to see why - the marching rhythms and forceful melody are the perfect material for Russia's premier male chorus to display their talents.  Alexandrov, as leader of the Red Army Chorus, is responsible for making it what it is today, and his son Boris continues in the family tradition, as evinced by his conducting on this recording.

3) Big Bill Broonzy, Night Watchman Blues
Long before the slick professionalism following in the wake of '60s blues revival, blues was an authentic folk artform.  Indeed, many still feel that the blues' earlier exponents are its finest; Big Bill Broonzy, a leading light of the Chicago scene between the wars, combined the rural and the urban in his gutsy songs, eventually travelling to Europe to pave the way for others to perform blues there.  In this performance he is featured with regular collaborator Blind John Davis.

4) Gamelan Orchestra of Saba, Jauk
Both an ensemble and a constantly evolving musical style, gamelan is prevalent throughout the islands of Java, in this case Bali.  The variant featured here is Kebjar Gong Gamelan, "Kebjar" meaning "improvised explosion"!  In practical terms this means a slightly smaller ensemble (25 as opposed to the 40-odd of other Gong Gamelans) and a purely instrumental music, beginning with great intensity.  The "Jauk" of the title refers to the ritualised dance that this music accompanies; masked dancers portray demons and witches with great balletic skill.

5) Calabrian Tarantella
Many people are surprised to find how prevalent the bagpipe is outside Scotland.  In fact, contemporary writings place it in Ancient Greece, and close relatives to the instrument have been found in the Urals and India.  However in Italy it survives as the zampogna, sharing the drones and air-sack of its more famous counterpart, but able to be played with either a single or double reed.  The single reed makes it considerably quieter - a boon for humanity, some might say!  In this tarantella, the zampogna reveals itself as a lively ensemble instrument, a far cry from the lone Scots piper or marching band.

6) Hana Roth, Ashira l'Adonai
Part of a survey of traditional Jewish songs from around the world, Hana Roth here performs an ancient Yemenite setting of a passage from Exodus. 

7) Rumba Gitana
Another unique event captured on tape, this recording comes from the annual Tzigane pilgrimage to the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in Provence, France.  There they join locals in a Catholic festival in celebration of the lives of Saint Marie-Jacobe and Saint Marie-Salome, starting with music and dancing and ending with a mass and procession to the beach.  Here we join a lively rumba, performed with flamenco-like exuberance.

8) Hazara More Kan Ka Moti
A traditional song from Datia, a small town in the the North-Central Indian region of Madhya Pradesh.  Two men, accompanied by rattle and tabla, tell the story of a woman's valuable pearl and her man's promise to buy her a second one just like it.  The tabla is played in a manner not dissimilar to that of classical Indian music; it is commonplace for folk musicians to take the established style as a starting point on which to add their own variations.

9) Quintin Gutierrez, Dolce Cana
In this Columbian piece, indigenous harp and percussion blend with electric bass and Spanish guitar - West meets West, if you will.  In this and his other pieces, Quintin Gutierrez elaborates on simple harmonic progressions with delicate harp arpeggiations to great effect.

For more information of the recordings used in this concert, click here

To add this concert to "My Playlists", so that you can listen to it later, click here