Russian music album "What a Balalaika!" by Nikita Siniy

Mikhail Smirnov's review of a new compact disk by Brooklyn based balalaika virtuoso Nikita Siniy. Read this review in Russian

NIKITA SINIY, balalaika virtuoso from Brooklyn, New York just released a new compact disk album called “What a balalaika!” which was recorded in a hot new style of “RUSSIAN FOLK UPDATED”. In fancy clubs of Brooklyn and The Bronx the musician goes with the stage- name of “RUSTY PALYCH”, which could be approximately translated as “Rusty Wood”. This stage-name is not accidental; it is how Nikita lovingly calls his ancient instrument. This, however, is how he calls all the folk music instruments, with the one exception of bass-balalaika. He has a special expression for the later one, which consists of a few Gypsy words, not to be mentioned here. Exactly for this reason, one famous contrabass-balalaika player from Brooklyn, New York Leonid Bruk hadn’t been talking to “RUSTY PALYCH” for many years. Currently, Mr. Siniy is a balalaika player at the “Moscow Gypsy Army”, Russian folk band directed by Sasha Ressetar from Harrisburg, PA. NIKITA SINIY’s latest compact disk has 13 tracks, which are listed below. TRACK 01 – Etude by Carl Cherni “Six Octaves” That is an interesting choice for the opening of the album. Masterpiece etude by Carl Cherni from Austria was written for pianists to exercise finger stretching and was never before performed on balalaika. As you all know Russian Balalaika has only two octave ranges, which doesn’t seem to be a problem for Nikita, who finds a way to get out of the traps set by the meticulous composer. When melody is out of balalaika range Nikita is taking a brake. When melody is back to reasonalble balalaika range, Nikita is back to work! TRACK 02 – “MAGIC BALALAIKA” I suppose that the story-line of this amazing number was adopted from a repertoire of London balalaika virtuoso, Bibs Ekkel. Relatively simple melody is accompanied by tossing the instrument up and passing it between the legs and behind the back, while imitating the work of a carpenter and soldier. Unfortunately, the listener is unable to observe the skill of a juggler but by the sounds of falling subjects accompanied by heavy breathing one could probably appreciate the hard work of the musician. TRACK 03 – «LAVRENTIY PAVLYCH» I must confess that I was slightly surprised by this choice of a story-line. The main character of the play came out from a long forgotten Russian limerick: “Lavrentiy Palych Beriya did not justify the trust, Therefore what’s left of him is only fluff and dust” Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beriya (1899-1953) is one of the most mysterious figures of Stalin’s era. He was famous for being a good balalaika player, for knowing how to use a revolver, and how to put thousands of Soviet citizens to GULAG (Russian jail). TRACK 04 – «AKH YOU SENYA» The right name for this musical piece should be something like “Ah, you lobby, my lobby”. At least one could recognize the melody of exactly this simple Russian song in the ascending and descending balalaika. The Russian name for this song is “Ah, Vy, Senee, Moee Senee”, where “Senee” stands for a “lobby”. Nikita, however, without even thinking about it, used the word “Senee” in a wrong context, assuming that it stands for a typical Russian male’s name - Senja. Also it was an interesting choice of a minor key instead of major. TRACK 05 – «RUSSIAN GYPSY MEDLEY» This musical number will likely to satisfy the experts of Russian Gypsy music. According to the performer’s will, this medley consists of a single tune, which, by the way, strongly resembles the tunes of one popular Beatles song; namely, “Yellow Submarine”. TRACKS 06, 07, 09 and 10 are the “must haves” of every single Russian music album, which include the rehashes of “Juniper, my Juniper (Kalinka)”, “The Peddlers (Korobushka)”, tiresome “Dark Eyes (Ochi Chyorye)”, and the annoying song about notorious doctor Zhivago (Lara’s Theme). I appreciated the idea of using special effects and disturbing voices, but was surprised when I got really scared while listening to usually peaceful waltz about Dr. Zhivago and Lara’s situation. TRACK 10 – «THE MOON IS SHINING BRIGHTLY» This song is dedicated to a rival-balalaika player from Philadelphia, Alex Sinavski. Knowing Alex, I can tell that he would be outraged by this scurvy trick. It is well known in the Russian folk musician’s community that to dedicate this song to any folk musician (“musykant-narodnik”) would be a really bad joke. I have to admit, however, that it is very well played. TRACK 11 – «OKILUS» is a once popular Russian folk song “SULIKO” superbly performed from back to front. TRACK 12 – «LEO TOLSTOY» This is a citation of the song “Separation (Razluka Ty, Razluka)”, which is associated with one very interesting story. In 1861 L.N. Tolstoy had a very bad argument (it almost ended up in a duel) with another famous Russian writer, I.S. Turgenev. Ivan Sergejevich soon afterwards wrote a song called “Separation”. In a letter to Polina Viardo he also mentioned that Lev Nikolaevich will die but the song “Separation” will remain. Sadly, his words were prophetic. It is not clear why SINIY chose such a strange name for this track because everyone knows that Nikita is not familiar with the creative work of Tolstoy and Turgenev and, certainly, never heard the underlying story of a song “Separation”: “Separation, separation, you’re foreign strange land. Nobody can separate us but father - wet sand. Forever and ever I sing this sadly song We’ll separate, my darling, and it will be so wrong. So why the separation should be between us, why? If we can just forget it, and simply say “good-bye?” TRACK 13 – «Eight'n a half seconds» This highly talented sketching combines the craftsmanship of different balalaika masters: Rozhkov's beauty of sound, Andrejev’s simplicity of arrangements and Shalov’s clarity of variations. Nikita secretly admitted that in order to record this track he used eight and a half balalaika-seconds (“balalaika-sekunda”). It is too bad that this music piece is too short and lasts only for eight and a half seconds. Although… it is how they say in Russia: “terse and clear”. WHAT DO OTHER MUSICIANS SAY: Sasha Ressetar (“MOSCOW GYPSY ARMY”): “…Totally, totally, man…” Alex Siniavski (“BARYNYA”): “…Good balalaika playing techniques in general but his tremolo still needs work…” Leonid Bruk (“Barynya”, “Brooklyn Balalaikas”, "Russian Carnival”, “Sudarushka”, “Tumbalalaika”, “Moscow Gypsy Army”, and more): “…Nikita is real $#&&%^##, there are way too many modulations in his music…” Mikhail Smirnov, {Ensemble “Barynya”} August, 2006