Happiness is there: 'The Secret' radiates optimism, Peter Somua calls for Ghana

Soviet "Beatles", African rhythms, classical arrangements of Eurovision songs - there was nothing but what was released in the last month of autumn. "Izvestia" reminds about the most interesting musical novelties of November, which for some reason you may have missed.

"Secret"

SPB FM Stereo, Volume I

When Maxim Leonidov announced at the beginning of the year that one of the most popular bands of the late 80s was preparing new material, old fans cheered up, although they were wary of whether the long-established Beatlomans would be able to bring back the mood of their youth (or even compose anything at all). The task seems to have been accomplished on both counts - the new songs ooze with optimism, and they have been written for two albums (the second one will be released next spring).

From "The Secret", however, as well as from their great idols, remained exactly half. Unlike The Beatles, fortunately, Zabludovsky and Murashov are alive and well, but they didn't take part in the work for various reasons. Leonidov and Fomenko, who were left behind, shook the old days to the fullest - the ten-year wait turned out to be justified. And if the previous album, recorded by a classical quartet, still reminded more of Maxim Leonidov's solo album, here we have a full-fledged "Secret", though a duet, and at times fully corresponding to the historical predicate "beat".

Peter Somuah

Highlife

The permeation of the Global South across the planet is especially noticeable in the distance: Peter Somuah has long since left his native Africa and settled in the quieter Netherlands, but the music of Ghana remains with him. On his new album, the young hope of European jazz turns to "highlife," an eclectic African style that emerged at the end of the colonial era. As the voice-over in the first track explains, the British hired local orchestras and taught them to play waltzes, sambas and "white" pop on European instruments. After the colonizers left, West African musicians added traditional rhythms and harmonies to the mix and the result is a danceable jazz style that has influenced music around the world.

Before recording, Somuah traveled home and talked to the patriarchs of the style. And his accompanying musicians, though white Dutch, were no less imbued with the spirit of "highlife" - so much so that, in fact, the only conventionally Western element in these compositions is Peter's own jazz trumpet. As the trumpeter himself explains, "my companions didn't grow up in Ghana, but it doesn't matter. What is important is their deep passionate attachment to African music."

Alexandra Pakhmutova/ Various performers

"My Love is Sports."

The former all-Union and now just our Russian company Melodiya has prepared a modest but significant gift for Alexandra Pakhmutova's 95th birthday - a digital version of the album "My Love is Sport," the soundtrack to "Ballad of Sport," released in the Soviet country in 1979. A rather dull documentary about the USSR Peoples' Spartakiade (Yuri Ozerov, who directed it, still felt more at ease in large-scale war epics, and even his great namesake Nikolai didn't save the situation), thanks to Pakhmutova's genius, received a soundtrack that changed "official" Soviet pop in many ways.

The very process of recording with a multichannel tape recorder using effects processors and multiple overlays was still new to the artists of the USSR. Here the outstanding Russian sound engineer Victor Babushkin, using an American 16-channel Ampex (however, the founder of the company was Russian engineer Alexander Poniatov) and a specially assembled Soviet console of cosmic complexity, achieved marvelous sound for equally marvelous songs. It was in this movie that we first heard "The Team of Our Youth", and the song "about those who lead us to the people", and the hurricane "Temp". Alexandra Pakhmutova appears here in all the multifaceted splendor of her talent and her ability to find the right voices and arrangements for her masterpieces.

Roedelius

90

Another musical tribute to an anniversary - this time to the 90th birthday of the great German experimentalist Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Still active today (last year he released two albums with the Icelandic ambient trio Stereo Hypnosis and his own countryman/student, pianist Arnold Casar), Roedelius is an iconic figure for contemporary music. He was at the origin of such phenomenon as kraut-rock, he reinterpreted Anglo-American rock'n'roll with his bands Cluster and Harmonia into the language of European avant-garde, he actually pushed Brian Eno (with whom he collaborated a lot) to invent ambient music, and this is not a complete list of his achievements.

Collected here are mostly unpublished, home-studio recordings by Roedelius from the period 1968-80. The concise pieces, played on his favorite Farfisa organ, with sound filtered through an archaic film duel, do not let the listener go a note - a case where simplicity creates art out of almost nothing. The physical edition on four vinyl records sold out in hours, so the digital version is a great opportunity to get to know another side of the German maestro's work.

Boulanger Trio

Who's afraid of...?

Carla Naltenwanger, Birgit Erz and Ilona Kindt have been playing together for almost two decades, naming their trio after the Boulanger sisters, French composers, pianists and educators. On their new album, the Boulanger Trio has set an ambitious goal of showcasing the role of women in musical culture, spanning no less than five centuries and arranging the works to fit their piano-violin-cello format. It was a bold and difficult task, but it was accomplished remarkably well. It may seem like the proverbial "novella", but in the hands of Carla, Birgit and Ilona the theme of feminism turns into an amazing story worthy of study.

There is room for everyone: there is the 19th century Swedish Elfriede André (the first organist and, in an unexpected way, telegrapher in the history of her country) and the German Fanny Hansel-Mendelssohn, who remained in the shadow of her famous brother Felix, the one who composed the wedding march. Here and our contemporary (and, incidentally, former compatriot) Lera Averbakh. The gallant "eighteenth" century is represented by the blind Austrian Maria Theresia von Paradis, a friend of Haydn, Gluck, Mozart (and Salieri too, by the way). And even earlier, in the XVII and XVI centuries - the nun-composer Vittoria Aleotti and the socially beautiful Venetian soprano Barbara Strozzi, who composed repertoire for herself (long before it became common place for pop singers). The latter have not been neglected either - the gorgeous, concise arrangements of hits by Barbara, Kate Bush and Alicia Keys fit seamlessly into the overall musical picture. And the song Snap, with which Armenian singer and author Rosa Lynn represented her country at Eurovision in Turin, does not cut the ear at all. Which, perhaps, proves once again: there is no such thing as bad music.