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On 13^th January, 2014, we start our new campaign, ‘Vote for the best classical album of 2014.’ The principle of the campaign stays the same: listen to the competing albums on the radio or on the project website: romaniamuzical.ro, grade them and comment upon them. The album that will receive the highest grade with the most votes will be named the classical album of the year that has just begun.

The first album I have chosen to propose will be released officially on 17^th January, 2014. Avi Avital is the mandolin protagonist, and the album is called Between Worlds.

Between Worlds – that is, between the world of classical music and that of traditional music, Avi Avital sails with certainty and versatility:

Avi Avital: This is certainly a very special album, each of the songs meaning something to me, whether it is related to my past or it speaks to me. I think each song tells a story about my artistic and personal identity. The mandolin is indeed a part of me; I fell in love with it when I was a child. Sometimes I even forget I am holding this instrument in my hand, it is so much a part of me, it is my voice; I don’t even think of the mandolin as an instrument, it is more like an extension of mine.

Bartók collected a lot of Balkan folklore, going from village to village in Romania, in Transylvania and in Hungary. He collected melodies, recorded them and then arranged them in a personal manner for his creation. He was revolutionary for his time. He included folk music in these 6 famous Romanian dances. In our day and age things are different: everyone knows or imagines something when you say “Romanian folk dances” and if they don’t, they can access YouTube and see what it is about in just 20 seconds.

Among the songs on the album we can find the Six Romanian Folk Dances by Béla Bartók, in a novel version for mandolin and orchestra, interpreted by Avi Avital and Kammerakademie Postdam.

Avi Avital: I think the mandolin is regarded differently in different countries. When you go to Italy and say mandolino, you get the associations at once: you think of the wonderful music of Napoli and the sun out there. When you’re in Germany, the tradition of having mandolin clubs and mandolin orchestras makes the instrument be considered for amateurs. When you go to America, you remember Italian immigrants who arrived in San Francisco and New York, the blend of their music with Irish one, which resulted in new styles – ragtime, blugras, a mix between the European musical culture and the American traditional one. It is interesting to discover the mandolin says so many things after all, and people don’t realize it. I am sure that at least one person who comes to my concerts would say ‘My grandpa or my grandma had a mandolin’ or ‘I like the way it sounds, I didn’t know the mandolin was a classical instrument’ or ‘The mandolin is a perfect instrument for Balkan music.’ So the mandolin has a message for everyone, perhaps not a clearly defined one, but it definitely has something to say.

In this album, I want to play with the images of the instrument – because it is a classical instrument, used mostly for interpreting Baroque music, which is associated with traditional music today, though. The mandolin is somewhere between classical and folk music, I believe, and I wanted to play with this image and give it a name in people’s conscience.

Together with Avi Avital, the album Between Worlds features guest stars – among whom, the accordionist Richard Galliano, with whom Avi Avital has recorded works by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Astor Piazzolla and Vittorio Monti.

I find Between Worlds the perfect broadcast for the beginning of the year, when we too are ‘between worlds’ perhaps, making plans for the year that has just begun, looking back to the past. Avi Avital’s music on this album is lively and colourful, exploring traditional music from all over the world – from Brazil to Georgia and further on, to North America. And I find it extraordinary that Avi Avital manages to adapt himself so well to such diverse repertoires: his mandolin sounds like a classical instrument and like a folk one at the same time. For me, listening to this album is a fascinating experience.

Avi Avital’s name must be well-known – his first album for Deutsche Grammophon, released in 2012, was included in our campaign ‘Vote for the best classical album of 2013’ and was nearly awarded the title. That first album included works by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Avital’s mandolin was so convincing that you almost could not tell you were listening to a concert for mandolin and orchestra, and not for violin and orchestra.

Between Worlds introduces a completely different universe, a music that most of us don’t even know, I believe – such as the 3 Georgian miniatures by Sulkhan Tsintsadze, for instance. Among the musicians that accompany Avital in this recording: first violist at the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Amihai Grosz, who has a grandfather from Romania, we discovered.

Avi Avital is turning 36 this year; in 2010 he was nominated to the Grammy Awards, inthe ‘best instrumental soloist(s)’ category – he was the first mandolinist who achieved this feat .

Avi Avital began to play the mandolin when he was 8 years old and studied in Israel and Italy. His repertoire is eclectic – from classical music to jazz, through Kletzmer and traditional music, but Avi Avital considers himself mostly a classical musician. He has decided to write a new page in the history of the mandolin, to bring this instrument back to his contemporaries’ minds and I believe that, so far, Avi Avital has managed all that he has set out to do and this special album goes to prove it, and we included it in the ‘Vote for the classical album of 2014’ campaign.