Valentina Goncharova: Campanelli (Hidden Harmony Recordings)
Pleased to have new work from Valentina Goncharova, courtesy of the Estonian Hidden Harmony Recordings imprint. Hidden Harmony reissued Goncharova’s Ocean 2LP, works for violin, mostly recorded in the late 1980s and completed in 2022!.
Goncharova’s first original album in more than 30 years, Campanelli (HHLTS03, 2025) includes treated violin, delicate synthesizers and drum machines.
Beautiful recordings The Guardian characterized as reflecting the composer’s cross-cultural Cold War sensibility: “Born in Kyiv, trained in a Soviet conservatory and inspired in a Mongolian temple”!!
After her studies in conservatory, Goncharova and her friend, the composer and pianist Svetlana Golybina, were assigned to teach in Mongolia, then an autonomous Soviet republic, but more importantly, “had the only Buddhist temple in the Soviet Union. It was the reason I wanted to go. We attended a congress of lamas and the Dalai Lama came. We felt their intentions, their interests. Since then Buddhism has always been very close to me. Traditionally speaking, I’m Catholic, but not strictly – I’m open to other religions and other mystical teachings.”
In 1984 she moved to Tallinn with her husband, Igor Zubkov, where without musical partners she acquired a tape machine and began a new studio practice. Again, from Jennifer Lucy Allen’s article in The Guardian, “Goncharova and Zubkov are close collaborators. He is an engineer who helps to realise her musical visions by setting up ways to overdub with basic equipment, electrifying and building her string instruments, and constructing contact mics for them to record the sounds of household objects. She is clear that even with the electronics, she always wanted her violin to sound like a violin, but these bespoke modifications mean the tone of her playing is utterly distinctive, with a tactility like raw silk: fine and luxurious; soft but with grain.”
Pleased to have new work from Valentina Goncharova, courtesy of the Estonian Hidden Harmony Recordings imprint. Hidden Harmony reissued Goncharova’s Ocean 2LP, works for violin, mostly recorded in the late 1980s and completed in 2022!.
Goncharova’s first original album in more than 30 years, Campanelli (HHLTS03, 2025) includes treated violin, delicate synthesizers and drum machines.
Beautiful recordings The Guardian characterized as reflecting the composer’s cross-cultural Cold War sensibility: “Born in Kyiv, trained in a Soviet conservatory and inspired in a Mongolian temple”!!
After her studies in conservatory, Goncharova and her friend, the composer and pianist Svetlana Golybina, were assigned to teach in Mongolia, then an autonomous Soviet republic, but more importantly, “had the only Buddhist temple in the Soviet Union. It was the reason I wanted to go. We attended a congress of lamas and the Dalai Lama came. We felt their intentions, their interests. Since then Buddhism has always been very close to me. Traditionally speaking, I’m Catholic, but not strictly – I’m open to other religions and other mystical teachings.”
In 1984 she moved to Tallinn with her husband, Igor Zubkov, where without musical partners she acquired a tape machine and began a new studio practice. Again, from Jennifer Lucy Allen’s article in The Guardian, “Goncharova and Zubkov are close collaborators. He is an engineer who helps to realise her musical visions by setting up ways to overdub with basic equipment, electrifying and building her string instruments, and constructing contact mics for them to record the sounds of household objects. She is clear that even with the electronics, she always wanted her violin to sound like a violin, but these bespoke modifications mean the tone of her playing is utterly distinctive, with a tactility like raw silk: fine and luxurious; soft but with grain.”
Pleased to have new work from Valentina Goncharova, courtesy of the Estonian Hidden Harmony Recordings imprint. Hidden Harmony reissued Goncharova’s Ocean 2LP, works for violin, mostly recorded in the late 1980s and completed in 2022!.
Goncharova’s first original album in more than 30 years, Campanelli (HHLTS03, 2025) includes treated violin, delicate synthesizers and drum machines.
Beautiful recordings The Guardian characterized as reflecting the composer’s cross-cultural Cold War sensibility: “Born in Kyiv, trained in a Soviet conservatory and inspired in a Mongolian temple”!!
After her studies in conservatory, Goncharova and her friend, the composer and pianist Svetlana Golybina, were assigned to teach in Mongolia, then an autonomous Soviet republic, but more importantly, “had the only Buddhist temple in the Soviet Union. It was the reason I wanted to go. We attended a congress of lamas and the Dalai Lama came. We felt their intentions, their interests. Since then Buddhism has always been very close to me. Traditionally speaking, I’m Catholic, but not strictly – I’m open to other religions and other mystical teachings.”
In 1984 she moved to Tallinn with her husband, Igor Zubkov, where without musical partners she acquired a tape machine and began a new studio practice. Again, from Jennifer Lucy Allen’s article in The Guardian, “Goncharova and Zubkov are close collaborators. He is an engineer who helps to realise her musical visions by setting up ways to overdub with basic equipment, electrifying and building her string instruments, and constructing contact mics for them to record the sounds of household objects. She is clear that even with the electronics, she always wanted her violin to sound like a violin, but these bespoke modifications mean the tone of her playing is utterly distinctive, with a tactility like raw silk: fine and luxurious; soft but with grain.”