Kladets
18 songs from the middle of the last century. Songs from squeaky gramophone records. Songs about an unknown field, a swan with swans, a good young man - Yasna Falcon and a drunkard husband. Songs that combined Russian folklore and the talent of the arranger, the style of Soviet “folk” choirs and forbidden jazz consonances, rustic brightness and true professionalism. Only sisters who are related to each other can sing like this. The Fedorov sisters. Ekaterina, Nina, Ninel, Anastasia and Galina - five sisters from the village of Stary Borok in the Pskov region. Now their names and voices, once heard all over the country, are not familiar to many people, unlike The Barry Sisters, The Andrews Sisters and others. But in the 1940-50s it was the most famous in the USSR, a unique vocal ensemble performing arrangements of folk songs. The children from the folklore ensemble “Kladets” have been studying and singing the songs of the Fedorov sisters since childhood. The ensemble grew up on this music and together with it. Why so? Not only the professional interest of the leader, a specialist in Soviet retro-music, and, probably, fate: “Kladets” has its own sisters Fyodorovs - Sasha and Dunya. There are also other sisters - Olya and Nina Fokina, Masha and Katya Burdasov. The rest of the members, Sima Zubkova, Sanya Sidorov and Katya Abdullaeva are close friends. That's why this album is about the path to kinship and chamber purity. About the uneasy way to each other, passed for more than ten years of joint sounding and listening. The album “The Fedorov Sisters” is the first in the history of the ensemble. The songs collected on it were recorded under different circumstances: most of them (1 - 11) were recorded in the fall of 2022 in the studio by the head of the ensemble Dmitry Fokin. The rest were recorded at concerts in different years. Some of them, such as “Maiden's Suffering”, were performed by Kladz from the stage only once. On the phonogram you can hear someone from the audience singing along to the ensemble, but we have left this version, as there is simply no other. The composition “My dear, my dear” was recorded and mixed remotely, in time of the covid quarantine of 2020. “Marusenka”. The record by the Fedorov sisters was released in 1949. The song was one of the people's favorites from the entire Fyodorov repertoire, often sung at feasts. Despite a decent circulation, records with this song have not survived, and those that are extremely rare can still be found, “pilled to holes”. Film director Georgy Danelia was very fond of “Marusenka”: it is heard in one form or another in almost all his films. “Gave it to the young.” This is one of the earliest recordings of the Fedorov sisters on vinyl - the beginning of 1949. The circulation of this popular record was gigantic, so thanks to it the whole country learned about the young group - the Fedorov sisters sounded in every house. “Nothing in the meadow stirs”. This song is one of the very first in the repertoire of the Fedorov sisters. They performed it even before they became a professional group. But it got on the record much later - only in 1951. Then it was performed by the quartet behind the scenes in the movie “Composer Glinka” by G. Alexandrov. It was the debut of the Fedorov sisters in the movie.
