March 7, 2022

SONG REVIEW 🎵📝 Elena Grakova - To the Don River



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Elena Grakova - To the Don River
Soul
Moscow, Russia




Overall Impression: Soothing melodies, well-realized performance, and a thoroughly calming nature help make "To the Don River" a wonderfully soothing classical piece that manages to both relax and evoke a strong emotional response from its listeners. Elena Grakova combines beautifully crafted melodies with equally engrossing harmonic movements to provide audiences with a sensitively written and highly delicate composition that has a particularly calming nature that is most certainly welcome in these trying times.


Strongest Point(s): Opening with some wonderful pizzicato strings that elegantly outline the harmony through the use of arpeggios, the almost dreamlike quality of the piece is gracefully set and is promptly enhanced furthermore by the delicate entrance of a marvelously majestic woodwind based melody that is wonderfully balletic in nature. This strong opening perfectly establishes the tracks delicate nature and this atmosphere is brilliantly built upon as the track progresses, both through interesting textural and tonal changes that are a direct result of the expansion of the instrumentation, i.e. addition of strings and subtle percussive elements, as well as the mature handling of the main melodic themes that are established. A great example of this is the way the main lead theme, first heard on the woodwind, is developed. The main theme can be heard in a number of different instances, albeit on different sections of the instrumentation, for example, the theme is passed to the strings at 0:53 and later to the piano at 1:28. Not only does this provide a number of contrasting perspectives on the melody itself, but it also presents the melody in a number of timbrally diverse iterations, ensuring that the composition is both thematically cohesive and continually intriguing to the listener.


Target Audience Appeal: This is will certainly appeal to classical lovers.


Artist target suggestions: Claude Debussy, Gabriel Olafs, Johan Sebastian Bach, Philip Wesley, Jennifer Thomas, Edvard Grieg, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Antonin Dvorak

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About the Reviewer:
Andre Avanessian is a freelance session musician, composer, and sound engineer based in the U.K. Having studied music production and composition at a degree level, he has taken his passion for all things audio-related to a level that has allowed him to become both a competent musician and performer. Being a self-confessed "Guitar Nerd" Andre has been continually studying the guitar, as well as teaching it, helping students both learn the instrument, develop their songwriting, and how to become proficient in home recording.