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Gerello Hvorostovsky Baskov Mironov Boyarskiy Antonov Talkov Malinin Letshenko
My star Those Were the Days Beliy Akatsii Grozya Dushistie The last word Dark Eyes aka Les Yeux Noirs Moscow Nights Vashe blagorodie (Your nobility, lady Luck) Russian musical humor Etc

My tastes are pretty antiquated in this area ;-). I like guitar and balalaika (like in Troika - balalaika) especially with orchestra like Osipov State Orchestra.

One Osipov State Orchestra MP3 collection is available from Amazon fro $9.49; It is also available in CD format ).  You can see some of the possibilities of instrument in this recording YouTube - Balalaika - Aleksei Arkhipovsky - Manege - Moscow 2006 (wait for 3:00-4:00 and 5:00 parts to see really interesting things) as well as in this one YouTube - Russian Balalaika Music - Paganini Kapric on Balalaika

A combination of singing with balaika orchestra also can produce unique blends, especially in cases when old Russian  Romances are performed (for example romances with Esenin's lyrics like Klen tu moy opavshiy, Otgovorila rotcha zolotaya, Letter to mother)  YouTube have several pretty rare Osipov State Orchestra performances with Yuri Gulyaev -- an extremely talented star who unfortunately died early:

Some performances of old Russian songs available on YouTube are really touching:

A few songs of Red Army Choir are great too, for example:

 YouTube does not have good performances (the bulk of performances on YouTube are low quality or recordings with Finnish musical clowns group called "Leningrad Cowboys" which does creates a comical effect but somewhat spoils the performance). But even if we put this nuance aside I think that Osipov Folk Orchestra is pretty unique and in a way more subtle in performances of the same songs.

There aren't many of high quality balalaika performances on YouTube but have found a couple of authentic Osipov performance:

Several other assorted but pretty good performances:

You also can listen to samples from Amazon (they are usually of higher quality then YouTube versions and give more correct impression about particular artist (s) performance):

Tamara Sinyavskaya  that I mentioned above in one of the Osipov orchestra performances (YouTube - Тамара Синявская У крыльца высокого)  is one of the most impressive mezzo-soprano among the stars of Bolshoi Theater.  You can enjoy almost a dozen of her unique performances of Russian songs on YouTube:

A selection of old Russian romances can also be found on YouTube:

Another less known but very interesting artistic chorus was Bolshoy Children Choir of the Central TV and Radio of the USSR. Here are some of their performances that I have found:

Recently I have found an very interesting documentary about tragic destiny one of the great star of this choir Sergey Paramonov:

The talented child star never adapted after his voice changed. The system was pretty cruel and after exploiting a young start for five years or so (like in John Kenneth Galbraith's quote "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite"). After that he has left on the street with no money to sustain himself after he cannot perform anymore. But psychologically he already cannot be anything but a star and probably need help pf a psychologist to adapt. But nobody prepared him to the evitable changes and that trauma lead to chronic alcohol dependency and early death.  Still his best performances will long bring people joy and happiness:

           

Old News ;-)

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Note: Other things equal, higher quality performances are listed first. Performances listed last might not represent true potential of the singer/band.

 [Aug 15, 2007] Gvertsteteli

[Aug 14, 2008] Ovsienko

[Aug 12, 2008] Natali

[Aug 10, 2008] Koldun

[Aug 6, 2008] Kobzon

 

[Jul 7, 2008] Makarevich

[Jul 6, 2008] Pogudin