Customer Reviews

Fairyland

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This is Transylvanian folk music. This is largely an instrumental album conisting of a number of long tracks each of which is a suite of dances from a particular region of Transylvania. It's ecumenical in that it promotes the notion of
Transylvanian traditions, as opposed to merely, say Hungarian, or Romanian. The first dance suite is Hungarian music, the next is Romanian, and so forth. The idea is that they are not warring musical cultures, but musical brothers and sure enough each seems to illuminate the other.
This would all be mildly interesting except that the tracks are pretty stupendous. These are not field recordings but expertly arranged suites that in no way compromise the inherent beauties of the village music.
They are played by a first rate professional ensemble that, again, has real understanding of the source material. In Hungary this record has the status of a classic and I think it deserves it.
there is singing, both within the dance tracks and of a few songs, to
help vary things and they are lovely songs as well.
There are three singers featured. One is Marta Sebestyen.
The other two ......... are not. And that is all that detracts from this
otherwise most wonderful record.