Belf Romanian Orchestra

To Fans of the "Romainian Orchestra Directed by V. Belf" I've recently received several quotations from the Jewish Music Mailing List about 'Belf's Romanian Orchestra.' Considering the amount of interest and activity surrounding this, I'd like to point out that my collection of recordings by the Belf Orch. has recently undergone a major revision. As of August on 2003, the collection is now enlarged and improved:

• There are 5 entirely new pieces.
• Almost all the pieces from the old edition have been replaced by newer, better transfers from the original disks.
• There are 3 pieces by another, identically configured band which recorded for a competing record label and which produced 'covers' of pieces recorded by the actual Belf Orchestra. (Musicians of today who model their performance style on the Belf Orchestra might find it interesting to discover that this practice goes back to 1913! The Belf records were apparently so popular in their own time that they inspired imitators almost immediately. This doesn't necessarily mean that other musicians actually wanted to imitate them, but other record COMPANIES definitely wanted to imitate the Syrena Company's success.)

All in all, there are 40 pieces—37 recordings* by the Syrena record company of the actual belf Orch. plus 3 'covers' by the Stella record company of Syrena records which have not been found (yet).

More detailed information can be found at my resource recordings web page:

wwww.muziker.org/resrec/"

Orders can be placed there or by contacting me directly. I recommend the latter for anyone with questions or wanting to haggle.

For those of you who have "unauthorized copies" of these and other of my resource recordings, let me point out that this project is largely a self-funding archive and resource—the fact that it is not issued on a commercial label does not mean that the income from selling the products is not important. This new revision to the Belf edition involves more than a thousand dollars of costs and hundreds of hours of time. If you have received a privately-made copy of one of my products AND FOUND IT USEFUL OR INTERESTING, I urge you to please pay for the priveledge of having access to this rare (and commercially un-viable) resource by ordering your own 'authentic (and better-quality) copy. I thank you for doing so!

Thanks for your interest,
Kurt Bjorling

* a digression: I don't know if I can convey in just a few words the amazement I still feel when I write or speak of such a wealth of recordings by this unique little band. The Belf Orchestra's recordings were a profound influence on my learning of klezmer music, almost from the very beginning. But I can remember when there was ONLY ONE available to most of us (from Martin Schwartz's LP reissue of klezmer music). Then there were two more, thanks to Hankus Netsky's resource tapes for 'KlezKamp' in 1986... one more from Hankus in 1987! Many of us wondered how many of these there could be. And if there were more, would we EVER get to hear them?! In ones and twos they trickled out from pioneering enthusiasts like Hankus and Martin Schwartz or appeared at the YIVO archive. Jeffrey Wollock's wonderful research article of 1997 documenting over 80 Belf pieces, recorded by three record companies, was a revelation—both about the quantity of material that had once existed, and about the industry behind its production. The story goes on, but anyone still reading at this point can perhaps get a slight idea that the fact that we have found so many of these recordings is still a little hard to comprehend. I wish each of you could get them all from me but somehow 'taste' each one the way many of us did when we found them one or two at a time, year by year ... [return]