The Balkan Project celebrates the varied music of the Balkans: Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and parts of Turkey and Romania. There's a little here of the folk music of all these countries, done up in modern arrangements for guitar and flute. And varied the music surely is, given that the area has seen the influences of numerous other peoples for about as long as history has recorded such things.
The Cavatina Duo (flutist Eugenia Moliner and guitarist Denis Azabagic) are wonderfully expressive in the music, creating little mood pieces in each of the short works on the program. The pair are flawless virtuosos, fully in command of the music and able to communicate it as fluidly, I would imagine, as any other performers could do for any possible audience. If the duo sound possibly more suave, more polished, more sophisticated than the traditional or folk or gypsy music suggests, you can't blame the performers for simply being so good.
John J. Puccio
Classical Candor
