Bach, Brahms, Monti: Gipsy Way

Album review

A century ago the program heard on this Czech release wouldn't have been daring or unusual, but for the year 2008 it decidedly was, and Czech violinist Pavel Sporcl deserves credit for stepping out of the norm with this classical-folk fusion experiment. Recorded live at the Prague club La Fabrika, the performance involves a roughly equal collaboration between Sporcl, whose repertoire until this point consisted of conventional classical works, and a gypsy ensemble called Romano Stilo he encountered at a benefit concert in Bratislava, Slovakia. The CD booklet notes (in English, German, French, and Czech) indulge in some hype pertaining to how the members of Romano Stilo gave Sporcl "the greatest compliment a 'white' musician can ever expect to receive from a gipsy one"; they called him "one of us." But the influence went both ways, for the program consists of more than half Romany-flavored classical pieces like Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, done more or less straight. Traditional Eastern European tunes dominate the second half, with a delightful reading of the French pop tune Avant de mourir (the source of the Platters' "My Prayer"). Sporcl is accompanied variously by some combination of a small string group, an electric piano, or a cimbalom, and the flexibility of the settings plainly kept the live crowd on its toes. The album is at its best when the performers mix things up most thoroughly, as in the opening track that fuses a movement from a Bach partita for solo violin with Hejre Kati of Hungarian Jenö Hubay, a composer and violinist who was in the midst of the ferment that developed when the concert tradition and gypsy music first met. The energy of that meeting is brilliantly recaptured here.

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