Coming soon ! The release of the album DUMKA

Dumka is an expressive diminutive form of the word duma, which originally referred to a Ukrainian epic ballad, often thoughtful and melancholic in nature. Dumka also became a favourite musical form used by Slavic composers, who enriched these pieces with contrasting sections of widely varying characteristics.

This entire album is a “Dumka”! Its varied pieces deeply reflect my being and have been selected from my heart. Some are intensely lyrical, some dense and full of life, while others convey a sense of mischievousness, showing that joy can exist at any time!

With this programme, I feel that I am offering some of the most beautiful things produced by the Slavic lands from which I come – their deep emotions, infinite sweetness as well as their strength and courage of life.

Tchaikovsky’s famous rustic Dumka piece is one of the numbers – with its painful and some genuinely playful sections, alongside his splendid Romance, as well as other rarely performed pieces such as Glinka’s profound Separation, his sparkling Memory of a Mazurka along with the religious sentiment of Borodin’s In the monastery, interwoven with the poetry of his Intermezzo full of hope.

And as a gift – to discover, thanks to the collaboration with Arthur Chimkovitch – pieces by Russian female composers, almost never heard on stage including ones from Ella Adaïevsky – her majestic Sarabande, and a richly sober Gavotte with veiled allusions in its central section.

Kashperova’s skin-deep lyricism in Two Roses reaches out to the volcanic force of Khachaturian’s Toccata, topped off by Tatiana Nikolayeva’s return to the innocence of childhood with Album for children, so intensely rich in energy it makes you want to dance!

This programme echoes life – it is full of contrasts and intense emotions.

This music, I feel it equally bewitching and life-giving!

 

DUMKA – the release on the Calliope label : March 25, 2022