Vesna Children's Choir: "Chants Du Monde" - Vesna Children's Choir, Moscow - Alexander Ponomarev, Director - Opus 111 - 1996

I have always had a soft spot for the rich folk music tradition and the special sound-world of children's choirs from around Easter Europe. Particularly those from Czech, Hungarian and Russian lands. My favorite works written for children's chorus are those by the great Zoltan Kodaly, who penned original songs and lovingly arranged some of the most memorable Hungarian folk songs. 

The Vesna Children's Choir is one of the finest ensembles in Europe and the winner of the most prestigious international choral competitions in Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Canada and France, as well as the holder of the highest European award for choirs of all types and ages "The Grand Prix of Europe" in 2000. Annually they give concerts in the best concert halls of Moscow, and have toured more than 50 cities within Russia. The choir has also toured at least a dozen other European countries, as well as Canada, Japan and China. The Choir collaborates with professional musicians, orchestras and conductors (such as V. Fedoseyev, G. Rozhdestvensky, M. Pletnev, S. Sondeckis, L. Marquis, T. Sanderling, S. Bychkov, etc.) and they have made (I think) at least 15 recordings. Prokofiev's complete "Ivan the Terrible", music for Eisenstein's film is on Nimbus as a 2-cd set and features the Vesna Children's Choir. Of course now I will have to dig around for it to post :)

The program is a real delight and it lives up to it's title; we get a taste of songs from everywhere (well, perhaps not everywhere - that would be a 100 box-set!  there are several disparate styles however):

From Moscow, with loveliness

At the moment I have on the Japanese folk song "Kisobushi" which is track 25 - one of the real standouts I think!


Enjoy the trip!

Vesna_Children's_Choir_SongsOfTheWorld-Tzadik.zip

http://www107.zippyshare.com/v/xfOm1Ylu/file.html