Olga Sergeeva - Music of Russian Lake Country. Studio recordings 2CD (2007)

Among all the remarkable Usvyaty singers it is necessary, first and foremost, to single out the name of Olga Fedoseevna Sergeeva. We communicated with Olga Sergeeva for ten years and recorded over 300 songs in the most various genres performed by her. I brought the singer to Leningrad three times and she performed in ethnographic concerts in the House of Composers, on Leningrad radio and made some records with "Melodia" company. Sergeeva is an outstanding folk singer. Ritual songs and old lyric prevail in her richest repertoire which indicates the high artistic taste of Olga Sergeeva ,as most of her contemporaries prefer singing new lyrical songs of the romance type. In the lyrical songs especially loved by the singer her voice sounds plummy, deep, however reserved at the same time and even subdued a bit, and from the very first sounds it spellbinds the listener with its beauty and cordiality. There is nothing outward, emotionally open in her performance, this is singing for herself with no relation to the listener. At the same time plainness, naturalness, strictness, is combined here with improvised freedom and excellence of micro variation. "Each song has one hundred changes", the singer remarked once. It is not by chance that Andrei Tarkovsky chose the recording of O. F. Sergeevas's song for his film "Nostalgia" (including "Kumushki" song - track 52).