A Treasury of Russian Gypsy Songs

Marusia Georgevskaya, Sergei Krotkoff - A Treasury of Russian Gypsy Songs

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CD Details

Artist: Marusia Georgevskaya, Sergei Krotkoff
Brand: Monitor Records
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: CD
CD Release Date: 1993-09-11
Model: MON71565
Music Label: Monitor Records
Soundtracks:

Dark Eyes
No, No, Don't
We Lost Our Liberty
The Cornflowers
I See Wonderful Spaces
Coachman, Don't Ride The Horses So Hard
Farewell New Village
Little Snowball Bush
Misty Morning
Why Fall In Love
I Won't Tell You
The Gypsies Went Away
Two Guitars
On The Moldavian Steppe
The Felt Boots
Scattered Rings
Kiss Me, Don't Frolic!
Chrysanthemums
Troika
Bublichki
On A Long Road
Oh, My Heart
In The Field Stood A Birch Tree
Weeping Willows
Little Midnight Star
Ah, Those Black Eyes
I Remember

Music reviews of A Treasury of Russian Gypsy Songs

Music Review: Masterful
Rating: 5 Stars

This is a masterful presentation of Russian "Gypsy" Romance and other popular Russian "fakeloric" music of the late XIXth and the early XXth centuries. Most of it was written for the salons of Russian intelligentsia. Often, it evoked Gypsy imagery, because it was a romantically fashionable subject at the time, not only in Russia, cf. "Carmen" by Bizet--hence the label.

Both artists, Marusia Georgevskaya, vocals, and the guitarist, Sergei Krotkoff, give a wonderful, unsurpassed and most authentic performance. The guitar accompaniment is beautifully harmonized with sometimes surprising key changes and rich counterpoint. Georgevskaya's deeply emotional interpretation and rich alto voice can be compared to Edith Piaf--she is so good.

Whereas what's on the CD is first class, what's on paper is less so. There is nothing here about the artists, and other than somewhat inaccurate English translations of the lyrics, nothing about the genre, songs and their authors. And, yes, most of them had authors. For example, the lyrics of "Ochi Chernye" were written by Evgenii Grebenka (1812-1848) in 1843, and were set to the melody of Florian Hermann's "Valse Hommage" by Gerdel in 1884. "Utro Tumannoye" was written by Vladimir Abaza (1861-1918) to the lyrics of Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), "Serdtse" was written by Isaak Dunayevsky (1900-1955) to the lyrics of Vasily Lebedev-Kumach (1898-1949), "Akh, Eti Chornye Glaza" was written in the 1920s by a Latvian pianist and composer Oscar Strok, the acclaimed "King of Tango", "Yamshchik, Ne Goni Loshadei" was written by Yasha Feldman to the lyrics of Nikolai Ritter, and the famous "Kalinka" was written by Ivan Larionov (1830-1889) in 1860 for a theater show in Saratov.

This 1992 CD reissue of a 1961 LP recording by Monitor Records is becoming a rarity, so grab it while you have the chance. I have seen the CDs still distributed by Smithsonian Global Sound.

Sergei Krotkoff (also spelled Krotkov) was probably the Russian emigre--according to Prof. Alexandrov of Yale University--who performed in the early 1920s in the clubs of Fyodor Tomas in Instanbul, before moving to Paris in 1926. There he met Marusia Georgevskaya, a niece of Evlogy Georgievsky, the Western Europe metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church. They immigrated to the United States in 1957, where they continued to perform in exclusive Russian tea-rooms and clubs of New York.

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