Anyone who saw Kronos join forces with Romanian gipsy group Taraf de Haidouks at the Royal Festival Hall a couple of years ago will probably jump at this CD like a kid leaping for a Christmas stocking. And yet the Kronos-Taraf axis is only part of the story. The overall theme of this 'Kronos Caravan' is based on the musical territories connecting north- eastern Europe with the Mediterranean and the Orient. The Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov did most of the arrangements, and the scoring also involves various indigenous instruments.
Like most Kronos albums, this one's art lies more in the programming - as innovative as ever - than in the value of individual pieces, some of which strike me as more durable than others. The disc opens with Aleksandra Vrebalov's Pannonia Boundless, a complex essay that slides in among viola harmonics, crosses occidental and oriental musics, and frisks to the sort of excitable friss that Liszt toyed with for his Hungarian Rhapsodies. Here and elsewhere it's evident that the Kronos team have been citizens of World Music long enough to feel naturally at home with virtually any 'foreign' idiom. Carlos Paredes's quasi-Piazzollan Song of the Green Years, for example, translates from a Coimbra guitar and Rahul Dev Burman's Aaj Ki Raat ('Tonight is the Night'), offers us gently syncopated film music tickled by a tactile tabla.
Enrique Rangel's The Little Death is a dense, ornate waltz and the Kronos-Taraf Turkish Song (with cimbalom, accordion, etc added) is upbeat almost to the point of fierceness. Kronos makes a brave (and largely successful) stab at matching its Romanian colleagues at around 4'22'': it almost works, and it's great fun to listen to. Rezso Seress's Gloomy Sunday sent me dozing three times (I have to be honest about these things), so best to save that one for sleepless nights. On the other hand, Terry Riley's Funeral March on Mount Diablo (a memorial for David Harrington's 16-year-old son Adam) holds you captive. It's the kind of oddball processional that a teenager might enjoy - tough, chancy and unkempt, a sort of breakers'-yard elegy that quotes the Dies irae chant (pizzicato) just before it closes.
I could have done without Anibal Troilo's rather tiresome Responsory (bandoneon-style music rendered for strings) but liked Carlos Paredes's Romance No 1, which crosses Piazzolla with Janaeek, or seems to. Skilful dance patterns mirror a Gallop of a Thousand Horses by Kayhan Kalhor (with 'spike fiddle' and 'goblet drum'), and Ali Jihad Racy's Ecstasy employs a 'frame-drum' and 'rim-blown reed-flute' (whatever that is - I don't like to ask). The rhythm approximates a habanera and the opening section showcases Kronos's excellent new cellist, Jennifer Culp. The journey ends in 'Surf Guitar' style with a pleasant but forgettable Misirlou Twist.
Still, as I suggested earlier, the genius of 'Kronos Caravan' is primarily in the planning and construction. You need to play the whole thing straight through (do try to keep awake through Gloomy Sunday). The sound is excellent and so is the annotation. Kronos has again succeeded in extending our world by allowing us to share its view. Here's to the next adventure.
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