Glinka is still known, with justice, as the father of Russian music. Before him music in Russia was largely shouldered by imports such as Galuppi, Paisiello, Hassler and Cimarosa. While building on bel canto styles borrowed from Italy Glinka added a very strong infusion of Russian folksong. This can be heard in the operas A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Ludmilla. Balakirev revered Glinka and was fully signed up to his belief that: “The People produce music, composers only arrange it”. He became the core of a group of new wave composers which included Cui, Rimsky, Borodin and Mussorgsky - not a professional musician amongst them although Rimsky attained fully professional standards through his own studies. In the early 1860s Balakirev made journeys down the Volga and collected and published forty folksongs. In 1900 there was a further set which he arranged and published but this time it comprised songs collected by others. The extended two pianist versions recorded here were in fact published two years earlier in 1898.

This disc is fully loaded to just a mite short of 80 minutes with an 18 minute work for piano and orchestra and just over an hour of alternated solo-sung folksongs and the same folksong arranged for piano four hands.

The Grand Fantasia was written by the 14 year old Balakirev. Not surprisingly the influence of bel canto, of Chopin and of Field can be heard. However amid the pearl and dazzle there are themes and treatments of an unmistakably Russian character alongside the folksongs Ah, it's not the sun that is eclipsed and Amid the spreading vale. The innocently pleasing effect is similar to that of the Chopin Variations on La cidarem la mano. The work ends in feline understatement. The folksongs, sung unaccompanied and shared between the three singers, are placed before their counterpart Balakirev arrangement. They are sung with earthy resonance by fresh voices without an undue operatic patina. The duet singing by Kalugina and Nikolayeva is especially memorable in Nikita Romanovich (tr.16) and I went into the garden (tr. 46) prompting a quick return to those tracks. The italianate decorative manner found its way into Balakirev's arrangement of Vasily Okulyevic and Birds and Animals but otherwise one can hear Balakirev staying within the confines of the new nationalist language and helping establish its conventions. Listening to some of these unaffected and unadorned folksongs one can only lament that they have not attracted a composer of Canteloube's skills to make of them something for the concert hall. They would need delicate handling to avoid suffocating these blooms with concert-operatic conventions. There were no winds and Rowanberry and Raspberry seem to place us within hailing distance of the puys of the Auvergne. This disc includes some lovely pure singing and world music folk fans need to hear this as well as Balakirev and Russian music enthusiasts. Congratulations to Martin Anderson and his collaborators in Russia for showing us that there are singers in Russia who can sustain a note without undue vibrato.

Nicholas Walker provides the booklet notes. As is customary with Toccata these are full and detailed. Walker seems to have taken a special interest in Balakirev and subject to the recent take-over of Sanctuary is recording all the Balakirev piano music on ASV. There is also a Danacord CD of Walker playing the Lyapunov sonata. He is planning a Balakirev Festival in 2010 to mark the centenary of the composer's death.

In summary: Early bel canto Balakirev and folk music sung and played freshly with a adroitly earthy resonance.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International