Klezmer from the New World

This is a clarinet and accordion duo, Susi Evans being one of the best klezmer clarinettists of our day, playing in She'Koyokh and the London Klezmer Quartet. Piano accordion player Szilvia Csaranko is Hungarian born, now living in Germany. This klezmer music from the New World is from the repertoire of Dave Tarras (1895-1989), who was born in Ukraine but only recorded after his emigration to the US in the 1920s; he is one of the important living sources for the American revival in the 1970s.

Tarras was prolific with his recordings. I have three Tarras CDs, containing about 50 tracks, but only three from those appear here. Most of his American recordings are with sizeable bands like the Abe Schwartz and Abe Ellstein Orchestra, and Evans and Csaranko return them to their more rural Eastern European roots – notably in the pastoral-inspired opening ‘Pastukhl's Kholem’, although some tracks, like ‘Sam Shpielt’ (Sam Plays) referring to American clarinettist Sam Musiker, keep the American bravado. Tarras' recording of the ‘Nikolaev Bulgar’ in 1925 has surely got to have been inspired by Gershwin's ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ of the same year, with its distinctive clarinet trill and rising glissando at the opening. Or could it have been the other way round? Susi Evans gives a masterful rendition here. This is a brilliant duo recording, which seems to relocate some American klezmer classics back in the Old World, with superb instrumental playing.