I was hesitant to post this given the influx of foreign records two weeks ago(plus the general unintended focus on international stuff this month) and the fear that this would sound too much like earlier posted stuff. However, I find that once something is in the rotation, it is hard for me to deter much. So here is this that I bought for a fiver. No sure why I paid so much for this but there we are.
Again, this will sound like ancient history when I read this but saw Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins last night at Jones Hall. I posted the record with Weill’s wife Lotta Lenya some time ago on this blog. Anyway, it was a pretty good production. Vocals were in English so I was able to follow the loose story. The vocals for Anna were handled by Storm Large while the Greek/family chorus was performed by the ensemble Hudson Shad.
This was the last collaboration between Weill and text writer Bertolt Brecht. As a side note, given that the original production had a focus on dance, Brecht, a Marxist, felt that ballet was the “most bourgeois of art forms’ and was not terribly hip to work on it. However, Marxists need to eat to , so Brecht went to work, wrote the words, got paid, and split. I found it odd that Brecht would write so much about southern places such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama without really setting foot in these places.
The conductor, who I believe was Canadian was Bramwell Tovey. I like watching the conductors. They look like mad scientists at times. But back to the point, was a very fine performance.
So back to this, he we have a collection of folk songs from Apon Records. Most of these feature vocals, both in solo and the occasional chorus. Not much information to be gleaned from the records but there is at least a translation of the titles into English. Lidia Ruslanova, Pavel Lisitsian, ad I. Petrov handle the solo work. As for the choruses, they are credited to Alexandrov, Piatnitsky, Ural, and Voronezh ensembles. Alright record. Typical Russian folk. Lot of accordion and balalaikas.
For a sample, I really like “Valenki Da Valenki/ Old Winter Boots” and “Akh Utushka/ You Little Duck” but ultimately went with “Kamarinskaya” which is a pretty traditional Russian folk dance. Ok, I am going to throw in “You Little Duck” for good measure.
$5 was a bit step but the record is good enough. Satisfactory.