Karaganda "Shemesh" JCC held a musical evening, devoted to the Russian romances, created by Jewish composers and poets.

  As musicologist and conductor of the meeting Irina Grakova said, the situation in this sphere is alike the situation, described with the following everlasting phrase: "The great Russian artist Levitan was born in a poor Jewish family".


   Old and modern romances were performed by Karaganda singer, a volunteer of Hesed "Miriam", Emiliya Kitchikiyan and a pianist Boris Propishan. Most of them are famous, but not everybody knows the history of creation of favorite compositions. For example, major evening's participants have never known before that a well-known romance "Yamshik, ne goni loshadey" ("Coachman, don't ride horses hard …"), was written by a composer Yakov Feldman as a joke, opposed to a romance "Goni, yamshik" ("Ride harder, a coachman!") popular at that time.

  About 30 members of Karaganda Jewish community attended the meeting. The performance was greeted with cheers.

Aleksandr Kotlitskiy