In the middle of World War Two, the ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky (1892 – 1961) discovered the existence of many songs written by military and civil people who described the misfortune that happened to Russian Jews. At the head of a group of scientists, he started to gather and record them. During a purge orchestrated by Stalin, they were arrested and their equipment was confiscated. These songs, forgotten for decades, have reemerged during the 1990s in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, where they were stored in anonymous boxes. At the start of the following decade, Anna Shternshis—a historian specialized in Yiddish studies—learnt of their existence and associated herself with musician Psoy Korolenko to bring them back to life. Halfway between musical reconstruction and pure creation, the results are convincing. Around Psoy Korolenko, a Russian-Canadian cast makes those gems shine beautifully.
At the center, there is the gypsy violinist trio Loyko, founded by Yehudi Menuhin’s former collaborator, Sergei Erdenko, who also pens part of the arrangements. On the sides, you’ll notably find David Buchbinder, a trumpet player who won a Juno Award—the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy—and a handful of high-level soloists (violin, guitar, accordion and clarinet). Center stage, alternating with Korolenko, jazz vocalist Sophie Milman—also winner of a Juno Award—, Latvian Jewish singer Sasha Lurje, as well as the son of producer Dan Rosenberg, Isaac, who performs the moving Mames Gruve (‘My mother’s grave’ in English), on a text written by an orphan whose parents disappeared during the Holocaust. But the Yiddish soul, combined to gypsy ardor and Slav agitation, rejuvenates, brings back to the foreground and joyfully carries these folk songs toward the light that they almost never saw. © BM/Qobuz