Concert review: Le Mystere des Voix Bulgaires - Edinburgh Usher Hall

THE mystery of why a Bulgarian vocal ensemble goes by a French name is explained by the fact that it was a Swiss producer, Marcel Cellier, who first introduced their music to the West with a 1975 compilation, that was discovered a decade later by Bauhaus’ lead singer Pete Murphy.

He brokered its re-release by tastemaker indie label 4AD in 1986 – and the rest is history, as the Grammy-winning Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares became one of the earliest and still biggest-ever world music phenomena. Besides, it’s a much better name than The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir, under which it was founded as far back as 1952. That clunky designation, though, gives the lie to notions of the choir’s otherworldly polyphony as representing some pure primal strain: while the singers’ distinctively penetrating, open-throated style and many of the songs they perform are of venerably traditional origin, the breathtakingly intricate, large-scale ensemble arrangements featured here are among the more welcome legacies of the Soviet era.

Be that as it may, the sound of these 23 women remains among the most marvellous and extraordinary you’ll ever hear, with the keen, steely timbre of individual voices blending into lush, ringing, shimmering layers they produce en masse, passing like a wave along the semicircle in which they stand, or swelling in a sumptuous blossoming of microtonal harmonies. Language barriers were rendered irrelevant not only by the songs’ own vivid intensity of expression, but the characterful vivacity with which they were delivered.

Rating: ****