Singers Power Russian Village Folk Festival

Debates about authenticity are hard to resolve, but when it comes to folk companies from the former USSR, you’d probably have to concede that most were authentic offshoots of the state-sponsored Moiseyev troupe--meaning that various grass-roots traditions were metamorphosed into high-gloss, nonstop spectacles. By no means unpleasant, these were “folk” from that mythical place where Busby Berkeley could have been a village elder.

On the other hand, there is the Russian Village Folk Festival, a post-Soviet-era export that brought a far more age-inclusive, wonderfully rich--and, well, authentic--performance of Russian folk traditions to Veterans Wadsworth Theater Tuesday night. The collective is composed of about 60 singers and musicians, most of whom are longtime residents of the six regions of Russia they represent, and some of whom are ethnomusicologists.

They are definitely not the Moiseyev. And what they lose in the high kicks and spins department (there was very little dancing), these performers gain in a musical virtuosity so deeply satisfying that appreciative sighs regularly rose from the audience. Women’s voices were the powerhouse theme of the evening, from the clear, full-throated tones of Natalya Terentyeva (from the Samara region in Southern Russia) to the polyphonic harmonies from the women of the Podserednie Ensemble (Belgorod), Dorozovsky Folk Ensemble and the Mokosha Ensemble (Bryansk), the Northern Pearls (Archangelsk) and Volnitsa (Rostov-on-Don).

To mention them briefly is only to hint at the extent of their individual charms--seen in the spirited songs and foot-stamping of grandmotherly women in embroidered aprons and gold crowns, the wrenching ritual lament for a young bride and the celestial, optimistic harmonies of bridesmaids dressed in jeweled tapestry fabric and pastels. Throughout, there was the haunting intertwining of individual voices that could pierce titanium but somehow also possessed a golden melancholy.

A smaller number of men provided instrumental support on wooden horns, accordions and balalaika, and the group Vladimirskie Rozhky carried on a shepherd horn-playing tradition from their region of Vladimir. From time to time, you could hear a tune that Mussorgsky might have lifted, and you could definitely see Balanchine’s inspiration for his intertwining daisy-chains of ballerinas in the walking and weaving patterns called “khorovod,” which translates literally as “walking with a song.”

But it was the strong vocal harmonies of mature women that lingered--in your head, and also because several performers still were serenading fans in the parking lot. It’s hard to keep a good Russian Village Folk Festival down.