Ukrainian SSR State Ensemble of Jewish folk music, cond. M. Rabinovich - Freilechs, Kyiv 1937

Noginsky Zavod B 5192 This is probably one of the last recordings of an authentic European klezmer orchestra before the Holocaust. In the 1930s, Kyiv was one of the major centres of Jewish research in the Soviet Union. First it had housed Iosif Liberberg´s Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (IEPK); after a major crackdown in 1936, during which Liberberg was shot for “leaderism“ and “militant nationalism“ and most of the staff members were disappeared, it was replaced by the much smaller Cabinet for Jewish Language, Literature and Culture. A person closely connected with both institutions was Moyshe Beregovsky, who had collected Jewish folk music and folk songs since 1929. Despite the generally unfavorable atmosphere for such undertakings, in 1937 he was able to assemble a Jewish folk orchestra under the direction of the violinist Mark Rabinovich (1870-1940) and to arrange for some recordings. However, the orchestra proved to be much too “folksy“ and was already i