La canción de la semana #992

...is Ave Maria often (mis)attributed to Giulio Caccini (1551—1618). In fact it was composed by the Soviet musician Vladimir Vavilov (1925—1973) and first appeared on his 1970 LP «Лютневая музыка XVI—XVII вв.» (Lute music of the 16th–17th centuries)^*. There, Ave Maria was performed by Nadezhda Vainer (vocal), Mark Shakhin (organ), and Vavilov himself (lute) and was ascribed to a "16th-century anonymous author". In 1975, Ave Maria appeared on the album Старинные Арии by Irina Bogacheva where it was attributed to Caccini.

Since then, the aria became enormously popular and has been performed by artists such as Irina Arkhipova, Sumi Jo, Andrea Bocelli, Julian Lloyd Webber, Libera, KOKIA, Amira Willighagen... I leave you with the instrumental version by Oiasso Kamerata (Irún, Spain) featuring Rebekka Riedel (cello).

*	This record was a brilliant musical mystification: apart from Greensleeves and Galliard, all the tracks were composed by Vavilov. For example, the opener, Canzona, was ascribed to Francesco da Milano (1497—1543). In the 1980s, this song, as «Город золотой», with lyrics by Alexei Khvostenko and Anri Volokhonsky, was recorded by Aquarium and became one of their biggest hits.

La canción de la semana #234

Dmitri Mamontov (Дмитрий Мамонтов) was an immensely talented flamenco guitarist from Moscow. Sadly, he died in 2002. I saw him playing live only once, about twenty years ago — he was busking on Arbat! In late 1980s / early 1990s, he was appearing reasonably often on Soviet television. You'd expect a lot of video clips of that era to be found on the web, but alas, no such luck. YouTube has four videos of Mamontov, all of dismal quality. One day, I hope, somebody will unearth better recordings of him and commit it to cyberspace. In the meantime, I hope you still can enjoy Dmitri's rendition of Monti's Csárdás.

La canción de la semana #199

Idly browsing the web (as per usual), I came across Humo, the Spanish version of song Так дымно by Vladimir Vysotsky (1938—1980), performed by the Argentinian singer and guitarist Juan Carlos Biondini. Both Spanish and Russian lyrics are available here.

La canción de la semana #65

No, I did not run out of Spanish/Latin repertoire. But this week I fancy something completely different. Here it is, Коррида из деревни Заборовье (La Corrida de pueblo de Zaborovie) by the all-girl ethno-punk-ska-rock band Iva Nova (spelled Ива Нова) from St. Petersburg. More of their music here.

Kirill

La canción de la semana #58

Continuing with instrumental music. In this way, our 'La canción' does not have to be in Spanish, as long as there is some connection with Hispanic music.

I would like to introduce a Russian flamenco guitarist Ivan Smirnov. I first saw and heard him live some 20 years ago in Moscow, when he was in a line-up of (then) Soviet jazz-rock outfit Arsenal (!). Tonight's song, Rendez-vous, is taken from this website containing 16 complete audio tracks. I hope you like his music.

Kirill