Search - Raskatov :: Contemporary Listening

Lots of duplicates, several unique, some bad mastering

Andy Van Pelt | San Diego, CA, USA | 06/22/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This Italian production has a lot of overlap with the "My Russian Homeland" CD (tracks 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 & 18). It also contains 3 of the better tracks from the "Crowning of a Great Career" CD (tracks 3, 4 & 5). It also has four tracks that until now were only available on the "Memories of Russia" LP (tracks 8, 14, 19 & 20). The last track is "Natascha", which I believe was on the US version of the "Ivan Rebroff Sings Folk Songs from Old Russia" LP.These are all good (or great!) tracks, though "Natascha" doesn't do much for me. The "My Russian Homeland" and "Memories of Russia" tracks are all among my favorites. All of these tracks are in the original Russian.The CD I have had some technical problems: the right channel was missing for a few seconds at the beginning of tracks 7 & 19. I also think I heard some distortion/static/noise on some other tracks.Ignoring the duplication, which is a perpetual problem with the Rebroff CDs, this is a collection of great tracks. However, the technical problems caused me to downgrade it to four stars.The CD is a nice production otherwise, as the CD is a picture disk, and has nice "jacket" art.My recommendation would be to buy this CD and the accompanying "Kalinka" CD. They're both cheap, and this will get you all of the "Memories of Russia" tracks (available nowhere else). The overlap with the "My Russian Homeland" CD is not a real problem, as every "My Russian Homeland" track is available somewhere else."