Double Duet/Plus One - Georges Bizet: The Carmen Project

I�m scared of Bizet�, was Dmitri Shostakovich�s answer, when prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya turned for help with her lifelong dream: to create a CARMEN ballet. �You�ll be disappointed no matter what you write.�. The next composer to decline the nonsensical idea was Aram Khachaturyan. Composer No.3 was found more accidentally: it was Rodion Shchedrin, who happened to be Plisetskaya�s husband. He wrote the entire score to the ballet�s movements and rhythms in only twenty days. Shchedrin called it �An arrangement of Bizet�s CARMEN for strings and percussion�. The composer, by his own admission, limited the orchestra to strings and percussion for two reasons: the strings compensate for the lack of human voices, and the percussion instruments underscore the choreography. And here comes the link to the actual album version: Igor Ponomarenko, an inspired alto Domra player and graduate from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, arranged - based on the model of Shchedrin's percussion-driven transformation - a very special reading of the Carmen Suite for his Double Duet MA.GR.IG.AL..