No, it is not the theme to Tetris.

July 11, 2005 9:07 PM

NameThatRussianFolkTuneFilter: a friend into shortwave radio picked up this song over the airwaves, recorded it to tape for posterity, and has been transfixed since -- but doesn't know what it is or who's singing. It's a long-shot, but can someone ID this?
posted by I EAT TAPAS to media & arts (9 comments total)

(I could have sworn I had the /b in there. I'm sorry.)
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 9:09 PM on July 11, 2005

[b fixed]
posted by jessamyn at 9:39 PM on July 11, 2005

No Idea. I suggest emailing a query to Ukrainian State Radio, or finding some web site that is about Ukrainian culture and contacting them. Doesn't sound like Ukie folk music though. It sounds art-music to me. I am pretty familiar with hard-core western Ukrainian folk music - I have four Hutsul folk musicians coming to visit me in Budapest next week - but this doesn't ring any bells.
posted by zaelic at 3:39 AM on July 12, 2005

Oh crap. Now I also need to know what it is. It's beautiful.

Maybe find a Ukranian website and ask them to translate what sounds like a back announcement at the end.
posted by tomble at 5:06 AM on July 12, 2005

Zaelic’s right: it’s art-music. It’s a piece called ‘The Dream,’ based on a poem by Taras Shevchenko, set to music by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, part of his ‘Silent Songs.’ There are at least two recordings of it available. There’s also a different arrangement of the tune for chorus, which is part of Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa.
posted by misteraitch at 5:31 AM on July 12, 2005

Wow, that ECM recording looks great -- I'm especially intrigued by “Four Songs after Osip Mandelstam.” Well done, misteraitch!
posted by languagehat at 8:06 AM on July 12, 2005

I recognised it almost immediately: it’s one of the two ‘Silent Songs’ that I like best, & that I listen to fairly regularly (the other being the setting of the Russian version of Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci). I must admit I seldom attempt to listen to the whole thing, as two hours of ever-so-quiet voice-&-piano gets a bit too samey for my ears. That ECM recording does look great, but as I already own the other one (which, incidentally, doesn’t seem to be all that widely available after all), I haven’t bought it. Here’s an mp3 of the Megadisc recording of ‘The Dream,’ as performed by Alexei Martinov and Alexei Lubimov, which, isn’t, I think, the version in the shortwave sample.
posted by misteraitch at 9:18 AM on July 12, 2005

Unbelievable! You guys are great.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 6:54 AM on July 13, 2005

ECM kick ass.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:05 PM on July 14, 2005