Customer Reviews

Golden Age Of The Russian Guitar

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4 star:		(1)
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I stumbled on a great little nugget of unusual repertoireby attending a concert by the artist (The CD was recently reviewed in Fanfare, if you have access to that pub.)

Timofeyev plays roughly 20 pieces in over 65 minutes of really unusual Russian Romantic music on the native Russian guitar (7 strings, tuned to an open G chord). His tonal palette is very broad -- he reminds me somewhat of Bream in this regard. It's a real treat to hear music that hasn't been recorded by anyone else. (Apparently Timofeyev discovered many of the pieces himself in "lost" manuscripts he studied while completing his doctorate.)

His concert also included some wonderfully shmaltzy Russian songs for coloratura.

Much as I love the Spanish and Latin American masters, it's a real treat to discover a whole, new, decidedly different tradition to enjoy.

We were totally unprepared for the sound of the Russian seven-string guitar, tuned (D-G-B-d-g-b-d')- very different from the classical Spanish guitar, something we would not have known without reading the album booklet. The sound is very "broad" - I can't describe it any other way, and the recording quality is great. The artist Timofeyev was also a great happy surprise to us, this being the first time we heard his playing. The pieces were unknown to us, since this was our first foray into the world of Ukrainian and Russian traditional airs. I must say that each and every one of the selections is an ABSOLUTE DELIGHT, possibly made even moreso by the pure, rich sound of the Russian guitar. I am guessing that here Timofeyev is playing on gut strings because of the very even temper of sound - none of the faint finger-slip, vibrations, harmonics & twanging you might hear from steel strings (no matter how expert and sure the performer is!). Now that we've finally gotten this recording, we are hooked and hungry for more Russian guitar music. Lastly, the album booklet is loaded with information about the instrument and its history. You will enjoy this very unique guitar music greatly.

This is not really a review but I have a question regarding the second item of the CD: Polonaise.
It has struck me that the composer mentioned is Andrei Osipovich Sychra. This is because all my life I have known that the composer of that piece was a polish composer Michal Kleofas Oginski and the name of that polonaise was "Farewell to homeland" (in polish "Pozegnanie ojczyzny") and originally it was written for a piano.
I would appreciate if some well informed person would enlighten me in that matter.