A Cimbalomprímás

The title of this album means ‘The Cimbalom Primás’ or bandleader and the player in question is Bálint Tárkány-Kovács, one of the new generation of cimbalom players in Hungary today. He makes the point that all the Hungarian cimbalom bands play a kind of fusion with Balkan music rather than the Hungarian folk repertoire. So what he's done with A Cimbalomprímás is gather a collection of pieces from what he calls ‘the last tradition bearers’ he met in Hungary, the Carpathians and Transylvania, and heard in collections by Hungarian musicologists of the last century. I’m guessing these are pretty faithful recreations of the archive tracks because one of them, ‘Kispaládi Keserves és Botoló’, seems to mimic a tape running slow at the end.

There's quite a variety of music – plenty of fast racy dances like the feathery light opening ‘Vasi Változatok’, some seductively slow ones like the ‘Kispaládi Keserves és Botoló’, the ebullient and rather Balkan sounding ‘Hora és Geampara’ and an interesting muted playing technique in ‘Szombathelyi Csárdások és Lefogás’. While it's only cimbalom aficionados that will appreciate many of the regional and stylistic differences, this is a most interesting project and is a fine demonstration of the craft of Hungarian concert cimbalom playing. Tárkany-Kovács is excellently accompanied by Márton Fekete on kontra (viola) playing chords and Péter Molnár on double bass.