Great Steppe Melodies From Kazakh

Kazakh State String Quartet; Isa, Elikbay; Yusupdzhanova, Aizat; Omarova, Madina; Kazakbayev, Alkyat; Temirbekov, Nuraly; Zhusupova, Zhanar

This new release leads the listener to music worlds little known in the West: the steppes of today's Republic of Kazakhstan. If Divox’s previous 'sister production' featured exclusively works for string quartet ("Kazakh Classical Music”), the present works now comprise a historical period from the 9th to the 19th century and to the present day, with two typical folk instruments, the 'Kobuz' and the 'Dombra' brought into focus. The Kobuz is a 2-stringed instrument, which, like a viola da gamba, is positioned between the legs for playing; the Dombra, on the other hand, is a 2-string long-necked lute plucked in a similar way as a guitar. To provide an acoustic impression, an original arrangement for the same instrument with string quartet is compared with each original composition on this album. All musicians come from Kazakhstan and met for the recordings in October 2015 in the Slobodkin Hall in Moscow (Arbatskaya), where a special team recorded the tracks with more than 30 microphones directly for 3-dimensional aurophony.

Price: $27.98