Mussorgsky / Tchaikovsky: Pictures

It is no understatement to say that the accordion is one of the most underrated instruments in the world of music. This exciting instrument is often reduced to the stereotype squeeze box employed by itinerant musicians to play old favorites on crowded streets, or the frequently derided oompapa music of Alpine legend. Nikola Djoric is not an artist who wants to shatter such preconceptions. He has no need to do that; it happens quite automatically. The world lies in his hands, as it were, whenever he straps the instrument with it's host of buttons to his chest. The two buttonboards on each side have a similar range to that of a piano. By using a swaying movement of the bellows the tone can be varied much as it can on the cello. This is augmented by the metal reeds set in motion by the circulation of air from the bellows and the various registers for bass and treble. Nikola Djoric is fascinated by the fact that the accordion combines the characteristics of keyboard, string and wind instruments. A fact which he exploits to paint the tonal pictures of his performance programmes. He has dedicated his debut album for Berlin Classics to two of the great Russian masters: Modest Mussorgsky and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. His approach is very simple. "I play exactly what is in the original score." No arrangements, just everything as Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky wrote it. It is this interplay - original score played on a new instrument - that informs Nikola Djoric's performance and which astounds the purists and experimenters alike. He applies his personal view to the images and to the music. At the same time, it is his aim to provide every listener with a personal sense of access to the music. Djoric is sure that "if Mussorgksy and Tchaikovsky had been more familiar with this instrument, they would have been fascinated by it."