A fascinating short journey through the most popular songs of the Soviet period to discover their stories, origins and cultural strands to which they belong. Masterpieces still little, or not at all, known outside Russia.
Like all of Gianni Ventola Danese's records, this is a musical research project on the Diatonic Accordion, and in this not only do different musical styles, folk, classical music, and jazz, dialogue with each other, but the Diatonic Accordion, always playing in a strict contrapuntal writing for quartet, takes an unprecedented step towards cultured music.
A musical realization that, in addition to the voice of Ekaterina Barinova, one of the most highly regarded singers on the current Russian music scene, features the collaboration of a number of very valuable musicians, almost all of whom come from classical music and jazz.
The project features a prologue, that is, a famous song dedicated to the accordion and accordionists, "Odinokaya Garmon," as a tribute to the instrument featured in many Soviet songs and also in this project. In fact, Gianni Ventola Danese wrote for this record almost all the arrangements for diatonic accordion quartet which makes it the first organic collection of songs accompanied on the Diatonic Accordion.
The project subsequently unfolds over three thematic chapters, three groups of songs that draw their origin and inspiration from three different cultural strands of reference: Traditional Music, the Great Patriotic War, and finally Soviet Cinematography.
The epilogue of the musical journey coincides with a song brought to success by one of the few artists born in the Soviet Union who had intense artistic relations with Italy during that historical period.
A project that also includes a 24-page booklet with the detailed history of each song, origin, meaning and translation of the lyrics. A record that sheds light on a wonderful and immense musical repertoire that shows us, finally, how the problematic nature of the current situation in Russian-Ukrainian relations might just be an accident of History given the cultural symbiosis between these two cultures that is evident in the genesis of these masterpieces.
For this reason, too, the project seeks to attempt to send a message of reconciliation between these two peoples.
