Balalaika - Balalaika Orchestra

Balalaika Orchestra

The end result of Andreyev's labours was the establishment of an orchestral folk tradition in Tsarist Russia, which later grew into a movement within the Soviet Union. The balalaika orchestra in its full form — balalaikas, domras, gusli, bayan, kugiklas, Vladimir Shepherd's Horns, garmoshkas and several types of percussion instruments — has a distinctive sound: strangely familiar to the ear, yet decidedly not entirely Western European.

With the establishment of the Soviet system and the entrenchment of a proletarian cultural direction — the culture of the working classes, which included that of village labourers — was actively supported by the Soviet establishment. The concept of the balalaika orchestra was adopted wholeheartedly by the Soviet government as something distinctively proletarian (that is, from the working classes) and was also deemed progressive. Significant amounts of energy and time were devoted to support and foster formal study of the balalaika, from which highly skilled ensemble groups such as the Osipov State Balalaika Orchestra emerged. Balalaika virtuosi such as Boris Feoktistov and Pavel Necheporenko became stars both inside and outside the Soviet Union. The movement was so powerful that even the renowned Red Army Choir, which initially used a normal symphonic orchestra, changed its instrumentation, replacing violins, violas, and violoncellos with orchestral balalaikas and domras.