I wrote this back in 1995 over the Christmas break It tells the story of a Russian fairy tale and is programme music ( like the famous Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf it tells a story) I intended to release it as one long piece but current distrubution wouldnt allow this so I had to cut it down to four sections.
Home recording in 1995 was basic and it was before you could record audio into the computer so I had a computer running midi sequence and a dat machine synced by smpte. What interested me about the demo was that it was recorded free without a click ( I started with solo guitar) so the music breathed like a classical performance. I had always found recording to a metronome click a bit of a sterile thing but it was practical and for years I worked that way meaning you could quantise and get things done quickly. So when I revisited the piece twenty years later I found the feel hard to reproduce unless I executed it the same way as the demo,
I also had the idea to add some singers since the choir emulations including the East West Hollywood choirs werent quite working for me. Truthfully I had struggled a bit over the years with classical operatic singers particularly the sopranos and although I had a good experience recording with the BBC Northern singers in 1985 the area was always a bit difficult. However as with all these things its about who you get and I got lucky with the choice of singers on this . Beshlie Thorp has a a lovely quality to her voice as does Debbie Cassell who is a highly talented and versatile folk singer. The male singer is John Telfer who is known in the Bristol area both as an actor and voice over and was perfect for putting across the drama of this project. I also got in a violinist to flesh out the sampled strings Clare Mactaggart
I shall now tell the story as told to me by my grandmother
Once Upon a time long ago in a Russian land of ice and snow lived a young woman whose name was Sonia. Her father had forced her marry Grigori who she hated from day one so one night she tip-toed out of the back door while he was asleep and out into the Siberian darkness. It was unusually warm although snow lay on the ground and she headed for the house of her childhood sweetheart Nikolai who lived on the edge of the woods. People usually avoided the woods at night it was thought that the Ice King had placed a spell on the woods and some people had mysteriously dissappeared. She felt that she had to risk it since she wasnt going back under any circumstances so she made her way into the woods. Very soon she started to see strange lights in the trees and weird sounds echoing. Then a sudden rumble like an earthquake and snow crashed into the forest smashing everything. The Ice King has spies everywhere and seeing this happening he had sent his giants to protect Sonia and gently they held back the mountain to save her from harm and then took her to the Ice Kings Palace high in the mountain where the Snow Eagles lived.
Sonia awakes in the warmth and comfort of the Ice Kings Palace and she feels as safe and warm as ever in her life, However The Ice King, who was a bit scary, comes and tells her that he has placed a spell on the doors of the palace and if she ever tries to leave she will turn into a snow eagle and be forced to fly the valleys for the rest of her days. Sonia was very upset she had just gone from tyrant to another how on earth could she get away from this place there was only one door and the windows looked out upon drops of thousands of feet. She started to feel like a bird in a cage and was very sad . She made friends with one of the Snow Eagles by leaving food on the window sill and slowly a plan started to form. The Ice King had said nothing about her leaving by the window ! She knew somehow that her friend the snow eagle wouldnt let her fall. There was just one thing left to try and that was to build up the courage to leap out of the window because she knew the eagle was going to save her. And thats exactly what happened after many days of trying to build up the courage to make a leap of faith she leaped out of the window and the snow eagle swooped down from her nest and riding on her back they descended throught the valeys pausing to float and that was the best fun ever. The eagle flew her to the small cottage on the edge of the wood her friend Nikolai was there to greet her and everyone lived happily everafter.
