Customer Reviews

The Don Cossacks Sing Russian Popular & Sacred Songs

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It is pure coincidence that I listen to this disc immediately after Nicolai Gedda's recording of songs of Rachmaninoff and Nikolai Tcherepnin (Rachmaninov - Melodies; Tcherepnine: Melodies - Nicolai Gedda / Alexis Weissenberg (EMI)). Wanting to understand where Swedish-born Gedda's apparently perfect Russian accent came from, I searched on the invaluable people's-processed and free Internet encyclopedia - a world of knowledge in two clicks - and found out that Gedda had been raised by "his aunt Olga Gedda and his adoptive father Mihail Ustinov (a distant relative of Peter Ustinov), who sang bass in the Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff and was cantor in a Russian Orthodox church".

Well, this is it: the Don Cossack Chor Serge Jaroff is the ensemble singing on this double-CD. We are not told who the individual members of the chorus are, and since the recordings date from 1959 to 1966, and I doubt that Gedda's adoptive father was still a member. I would probably never have bought it, if it wasn't for my interest in this collection, DG Double, originated I think with French DG. They made valuable reissues in the mid 1990s, including lots of rare stuff from Fricsay (from Haydn to Hartmann - and this is not in alphabetical order), Böhm's Beethoven, Münch's DG Berlioz Requiem and Markevitch's Harold in Italy, Furtwängler's Bruckner, Dino Ciani's Debussy Preludes and much more. Not all are listed on this website.

The Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff was a men's chorus of exiled Russian Cossacks, founded in 1921 by the Cossack leutenant Jaroff and conducted by him for almost sixty years. They gave their first concert in the USA in 1930 and all the members acquired US citizenship in 1936 (most of these details come from the entry on the above-mentioned encyclopedia, not from the scanty liner notes).

You get all you expect with a Russian chorus - and more. The sepulchral basses, but also the falsetto singing tenors. The hymns and the romp. All the songs on CD1 are folk-derived, and you get an alternation of the mourning and desparate (examples track 1 & 4), the plangent and meditative (examples track 9, "The Complaint of a Young Ukrainian Maiden" and 11 "The Broken Heart"; tracks 19 and 20 sound like the Russian version of Negro spirituals), but also the romping, sometimes accompanied even by piercing whistling (tracks 2 & 3 17), sounding like drinking songs: best way for mourning, in ancient (ancient?) Russia. As there are more deads than living, there are many occasions for mourning. CD 1 Track 14 is both, starting like a hushed Christmas song and turning into a romp. This is not your classically-trained chorus singing Brahms' German Requiem: ensemble is untidy at times - and should be. CD2 is devoted to the religious chants and is more uniformly hymnal and mourning, with added bells in some tracks (9, 11, 14). The voices do the bells in track 7, « din-don », « In Jerusalem the bells are pealing ». The arrangement of Gounod's Ave Maria, track 15, is kitsch but enjoyable.

Fine sound, with especially noteworthy stereo spread, scanty liner notes, no texts, only the song titles (in French) and their composers or arrangers. TT 140 minutes. You may also want to try Schwarze Augen by the same performers, it is as enjoyable and duplicates only one track from the present twofer.

I've had this CD for a long time. I love the singing even if it's a bit dated now. What I will NEVER understand is why a German record company would release in the U.S.A. a recording of RUSSIAN music with ONLY FRENCH titles!