This is a fun resurrection
from Aulos’s increasingly useful stable
of Melodiya reissues, dusted down in
DSD remastering direct from the Russian
tapes. This looks like – though I can’t
confirm it – two LPs’ worth of light
music arrangements from three sessions
recorded between 1958 and 1966. The
belles of the ball are the violins of
the Bolshoi Theatre and the arrangements
are by G. Zaborov – and I’m sure we
all feel nostalgic for the days when
Soviet musicians had severe initials
and not luxuriant fore and familial
names.
There’s not much that
I can tell you about these arrangements
that you can’t guess from (a) a look
at the music and (b) knowledge that
these are written for an all-violin
combination. What I should add is that
there is a role for a piano, which supports
the texture, leads melodically and sometimes
has a little concertante role of its
own. But in the main these are end-of-a–long-day
morsels to be listened to with a glass
of something and preferably not too
much going on upstairs. Relaxation is
the name of this particular game.
That said there are
still little moments of particular pleasure.
Take the middle voicings of the Gluck
which sound uncannily like a choir or
the big, massed Handel-Halvorsen standby,
which thins down to solo piano and then
solo violin and viola to contrast with
the mass swell of the Bolshoi beef.
Not to be overlooked either is the effective
Rachmaninov Vocalise, which is well
suited anyway, though the slightly schlocky
Granados arrangement outstays its welcome.
And so, it has to be said, does the
Massenet (known to Anglophone fiddlers
as The Medication from Thais). The Kreisler
(here named in the booklet, as in days
of yore, Tartini) lacks nimbleness.
Still, no bones broken.
The DSD remastering hasn’t entirely
been able to cope with a variable amount
of tape hiss. A veritable slice of nostalgia,
Melodiya-style, given the kiss of life
from Aulos.
Jonathan Woolf
Bolshoi Theatre Violin Ensemble (all arrangements
by G Zaborov) 
