"The few documents I had collected gave me the feeling that I was standing on the threshold of a wonderful cave, like that of Ali Baba, which I had the opportunity to explore at will. Since that time I must confess that I cannot remember how many people I have contacted, nor communities and towns visited, nor how often I have stayed, for short or longer periods, in five countries of the eastern Mediterranean. My investigations were in no way limited to poetry and song. Folklore constitutes a whole world, and I was anxious in particular to know that of my people." Alberto Hemsi wrote these words just two years before he died, in a retrospective as a foreword to the last and tenth volume of his opus magnum, the collection of works for voice and piano known as Coplas Sefardies. More than fifty years earlier, at the beginning of the 1920s, he had begun to collect examples of the folklore of the Sephardi Jews - "his people" - and to arrange them for concert performance. The present release features the world premiere recording of the original version
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"The few documents I had collected gave me the feeling that I was standing on the threshold of a wonderful cave, like that of Ali Baba, which I had the opportunity to explore at will. Since that time I must confess that I cannot remember how many people I have contacted, nor communities and towns visited, nor how often I have stayed, for short or longer periods, in five countries of the eastern Mediterranean. My investigations were in no way limited to poetry and song. Folklore constitutes a whole world, and I was anxious in particular to know that of my people." Alberto Hemsi wrote these words just two years before he died, in a retrospective as a foreword to the last and tenth volume of his opus magnum, the collection of works for voice and piano known as Coplas Sefardies. More than fifty years earlier, at the beginning of the 1920s, he had begun to collect examples of the folklore of the Sephardi Jews - "his people" - and to arrange them for concert performance. The present release features the world premiere recording of the original version
