Csardas Hungarian Gypsy Music
Product Details
Customer Reviews
Good Hungarian Music, Even Though It Falls Slightly Short
Being Hungarian myself, the son of a musician (my father plays the cimbalom) and a musician myself, I'd be lying if I said this CD by Santa Ferenc is great. Good? Yes. And well worth the price, but I've heard better Hungarian gypsy violinist in my time. If you really want to hear great Hungarian music try to find LPs by the lengendary Babai Bela, Lakatos Sandor, Berki Laszlo, and Banyak Kalman. Santa Ferenc has some good arrangements but lacks the feeling and depth of these other musicians. Although it probably isn't fair to him to compare him to others and is best if we judge his music purely on its own merits.
If you are familiar with Hungarian music you'll probably recognize many of the songs on the CD. They consist mainly of standard Hungarian and some Romanian gypsy songs. Track three which is titled on here merely as "Hungarian Songs" starts off with a song called "Gloomy Sunday" a song once deemed a suicide theme. We then have "Whistling Hora" a Romanian tune which has a nice arrangement and allows for some good solos. One of my favorite tracks on the album is "Doina and Hora" which is Romania but I believe the piece is really titled "Giabaralele" at least it sounds awfully close to it. It is a cimbalom solo, which unfortunately the album doesn't give credit to the other members in Santa's band. Whomever is on the cimbalom is quite good. He also has a good solo on another Romanian piece "The Lark" or as it is known in Romanian "Ciocirlia".
I've read some people have complained about the "sound" of the album, claiming it is not authentic Hungarian music. I honestly have no clue what they are talking about. I can honestly say, without exaggeration, I have listen to this music every day of my life since as far back as I can remember and this CD sounds pretty much like what you'd expect a Hungarian gypsy album to sound like.
Again, while it's not fair to compare Santa Ferenc (whom for the sake of complete honesty I should admit knows my father) to other Hungarian musicians, I still feel Santa merely plays the songs and doesn't add much emotion to them, the CD is still one most fans of Hungarian music should enjoy. *** 1\2 out of *****
Bottom-line: While not a great CD and not a great musician Santa Ferenc does have some good arrangements and good musicians backing him up plus a nice collection of famous Hungarian and Romanian songs. While he doesn't compare to other great musicians, for the price it is well worth it and doesn't need to compare.
can you say cacophony?
Let me preface this review with the disclaimer that I *almost* know nothing about hungarian gypsy music - BUT I purchased this cd based upon the positive customer reviews found here. Don't believe any of it - this cd completely lacks ANY depth or richness expected of traditional gypsy music - most songs are fully overwhelmed by a single instrument of extremely annoying high-pitched screeching clearly produced by some solo egomaniacal musician not interested in texture but inducing suicidal tendencies in the listener, not unlike being subjected to a full hour of screaming cats in heat in the alley. Luckily you can just throw the cd in your garbage instead of having to hurl garbage at stray cats to shut the gawdawful noise up.
Mixed bag
My grandfather listen to alot of this music as I was growing up and I was hoping this cd would be like revisiting a stay at his house. On some levels it was, the basic sound was there, and some of the songs sounded right but there was not that fevered pitch that I was used to in Hungarian Gypsy Music. Some of the songs sounded totatly different from what I expected, there was one that broke down into this atonal, disjuncted fiddle and horns combo that I had never incountered before.
Not what I was expecting and wanting but still brings back fond memories.
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