Russian Hits: I Will Remember

An 80-s Russian rock ballad by Aleksandr Ivanov and Vladimir Presnyakov.

Russian Hits: The Last Thing That I'll Say

Another tragic Russian song: The Last Thing That I'll Say. The heroine dies later the same day rejected by her love and killed by the man who she rejected.

Russian Hits: I Will Never Forget You

A 1983 hit from Juno And Avos opera about tragic lovers: a Russian sailor and a Spanish noble lady in 18th-century California.

Russian Hits: Ne Otrekayutsya Lyubya

When Loving How Can You Renounce - a song to the lyrics by a tragic poet Veronika Tushnova from the 50s who died of unrequited love.

Russian Hits: Help Me Out

A classic 60s hit from one of the most popular Russian movies ever: The Diamond Hand.

Russian Hits: Fnishing The Circle

A New Year's anthem from 1987 USSR by the biggest stars of the time. Peculiarly enough, the lyrics were written by six (!) people.

Russian Hits: Vladimir Presnyakov - Zurbagan

Vladimir Presnyakov singing his own cover. It's a mid-80s hit Zurbagan named after a imaginary romantic port city from the books by Aleksandr Grin.

Russian Hits: I Want To Be With You

One of my most favourite songs when I was a teenager. The melody is beautiful but the lyrics are simply superb, possibly best modern Russian poetry. It is about someone who can't put up that his lover has tragically died and apparently ends up in a psychiatric ward after many attempts of suicide. Aleksandr Ivanov is singing a cover of Soviet 80's super star group Nautilus Pompilius. The title is I Want To Be With You.

Russian Hits: Alyona Sviridova singing jazz

This is one of my favourite Russian (well, technically, Belorussian) singers, Alyona Sviridova. The song is called I'm The Right One. It is a cover of an early 90s Russian hit. It goes about someone whose object of affection thinks she's out of his league (it's a guy's song originally) but he says that if given a chance he can prove he's the right one for her. Very nicely flowing, beautifully crafted lyrics.

Handel - The Genius Of Spiritual Pop

George Frideric Handel is my favourite composer of all times, definitely one of the greatest who have ever walked on earth. I chime in here with such grands as Bach who apparently said "[Handel] is the only person I would wish to see before I die, and the only person I would wish to be, were I not Bach."; then Mozart who is reputed to have said of him "Handel understands effect better than any of us. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt", and to Beethoven to whom he was "the master of us all".

In my eyes Handel's Messiah by far the pinnacle of human musical genius and I even happen to know the whole libretto by heart but his many most beautiful operas and oratorios also deserve more exposure then they get.

His music is an oddity, a sort of hybrid the way it stands one foot in Baroque and the other in the more modern Romantic tradition. Born German and later a naturalized British subject, his pensive, lofty philosophical Germanic streak is tempered by the Anglo-Saxon demand to be popular and profitable into the unrivalled ability to combine the sublimest heights of spiritual epiphanies with very catchy, almost pop melodies.

Quite poignantly, he wrote and produced The Messiah at a sort of breakpoint when when he was old, broke and physically sick, but it only seems to have made his spirit soar so high as to compose music that sounds exactly how angels should sing in Heaven praising Lord. They say something like "Talents need suffering to become geniuses", this may have been the case here.

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I wholeheartedly agree with the Anglo-Saxon tradition to stand up to full attention when listening to Hallelujah, how can you not? I have heard it on many on occasion from Bangkok to Amsterdam and it never fails to reduce me to cathartic tears.

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Ombra Mai Fu, his most famous operatic piece was written for a counter-tenor but I prefer it in Bryn Terfel's very cool and heartfelt baritone rendition.

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A mind-boggling modern glimpse into how Handel's secular arias were supposed to be sung by counter-tenors. Derek Lee Ragin will blow your mind off.

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In recent years there have cropped up a number of very interesting modern productions of Handel's Opera, you can sometimes catch those on Sunday evenings on the Mezzo Channel. I quite enjoy those because their understated post-modern mise-en-scène does not distract from the superb quality of singing performance. This is a bit of Giulio Cesare by Opus Arte:

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This awe-inspiring anthem, Zadok the Priest, will definitely send shivers down your spine. No wonder British royalty have used it for their coronation ceremonies since George II. I love the understated way that the introduction builds up to but still does not quite prepare you for the overwhelming regal assault of the mighty choir. The contrast is as close to orgasmic as you can ever expect from music.

Sa Dingding - The Chinese Wonder

This kind of Chinesey New Age music style is nothing new, Oliver Shanti has been doing it since the 80s but Sa Dingding's (薩頂頂) music is nevertheless lovely. Coupled with her striking looks and memorable imagery of her videos it makes a nice package. She is poised to be heavily promoted in the West in advance of the Olympics in Beijing. I am looking forward to her success here.



For those interested, here're the lyrics:

嗡, 班炸薩多沙嘛雅 嘛奴巴拉耶
別炸薩多爹奴巴的叉司左咩巴哇
蘇多卡欲咩巴哇 蘇浦卡玉咩巴哇
阿奴囉多咩巴哇 沙爾哇司地咩渣也叉

沙爾哇 噶爾麻 蘇渣咩即打司哩任
古魯吽 哈哈哈哈 呵巴噶問
沙爾哇 打他噶打 班炸嘛咩母渣
班至巴哇 嘛哈沙媽耶 薩多啊
吽呸。

It's the Mandarin transliteration of a Sanskrit mantra, a sort of Buddhist prayer.

Best Selling Musical Artist Ever

I know what you are thinking: Madonna. Well no, it's Russia's Alla Pugacheva. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, she sold more records than Michael Jackson: over 250 million. She did have the advantage of performing in a tightly controlled market but even under Communists nobody was making Russians buy any particular artist's records, so the tally is fair.

Throughout her career spanning over 40 years she has reinvented herself on many an occasion and stayed immensely popular in the Russian-speaking world. Author of many of her songs, she's quite a Russian phenomenon and just like our greatest national poet Pushkin is untranslatable.