Music Reviews

Sep 21, 1999 - Firebird Balalaika Opens 65th Community Concert Season

By Jack Neal

Ancient is as ancient was.

It's appropriate that an old musical tradition should open the 65th Washoe County Community Concerts season. The Firebird Balalaika Ensemble, which did the honors Monday night (9/20/99) before a large Pioneer Center audience, represents one of the oldest Russian and Ukrainian folk music traditions. The meshing of two old traditions, Washoe County Community Concerts is Nevada's oldest concert series, made for a particularly auspicious and meaningful season-opening event.

Oddly and interestingly, the Firebird Balalaika Ensemble is at home in Los Angeles, not Moscow. The four-piece band made up of a domra, prima balalaika, contra bass balalaika and bayan - plus an operatic tenor for variety - is an internationally hybrid outfit composed of, I'm guessing, two Americans and three Russians. Whatever the mix, the music these five musicians make together is enchanting.

Hearing a program presented by the Firebird Ensemble is like experiencing three concerts in one. There is the Firebird, which is the four-piece band which anchored the concert. There is, within the Firebird, a superb duo from Kiev called the Magic Strings, and indeed they are magical. Made up of Iryna Orlova, a first-rate virtuoso of the dorma (the most soprano of the complete band's instruments), and Anatoly Mamalyga, an equally splendid artist on the less showy bayan (an accordion type wind instrument). The two musicians are from Kiev, are wife and husband, and play exquisitely together. Their playing was described by an aficionado of their work as being so personal and private it seemed an intrusion to eavesdrop. She plays with dazzling brilliance. He plays with abandon and love.

Prima balalaikist (the more-or-less contralto of the band's instruments) Peter Rothe with Tom Barnes on contra bass balalaika, complete the Firebird Ensemble and are easily up to balancing the beautiful work of Miss Orlova's and Mr. Mamalyga's.

Rather than fussing with a list of music that's largely unknown to American audiences, perhaps it's enough to say that the program was varied within the confines of the evening's samness of sounds. Some of the music was familiar - "Lara's Theme," for example, from David Lean's epic movie, "Dr. Zhivago," and "O Sole Mio" from every tenor's Italian repertory. What was unfamiliar was, nonetheless, haunting in its Russian-Ukrainian folk idiom sound.

Tenor Alexander Agamirzov has one of those liquid, lyric tenor voices that wraps around melodies like gorgeously mellifluous speech. He has an unaffected, yet captivating style harmed only by amplification he didn't need. Sound levels for Mr. Agamirzov were on the edge of discomfort and blocked, sadly so, the impact of all he sang. The human voice, especially one of Mr. Agamirzov's quality, is so lovely and translucent just as it is, why must it be squeezed through electronic gadgetry in a smallish auditorium the tenor could fill on his own terms? The delicateness of the string instruments used for this program require some sound boosting, but not a voice of operatic proportions in a hall so small.

It's clear these musicians work at creating a varied program. Bravo for that. That they, to a certain extent, failed to maintain rapt interest is more a problem of too many selections (over two dozen), too much commentary (charmingly presented by Peter Rothe, but in a long program something that needs trimming) and too long an intermission for CD sales (and I "am" sympathetic to musicans' needs for making money).

In spite of all that, the performances of this fascinating group cannot be faulted. The Firebird Balalaika Ensemble is musically superb.

The next presentation of the Washoe County Community Concerts Association will be the New Century Saxophone Quartet on November 17. All of the organization's concerts are at the Pioneer Center, 100 South Virginia Street, Reno. For information call 775 333 4330. For tickets call 775 686 6600.