In 1936 a young Russian emigrant, Evgeni Pavlovski, founded a balalaika ensemble in Denmark, named "Pavlovskis balalaka orkester" Evgeni Pavlovski

Pavlovskis balalajka orkester today consists of about 25 members. It is a non-commercial amateur orchestra. The Repertoire has about 250 titles from Russian folk music, Gipsy music to classical music written by Russian composers. The orchestra has some exceptional good instruments, helped by donation of old original Russian instruments from a generous American collector.

Nobody knows the exact history of the balalaika. It probably comes to Russia with the Mongolian invasion in the 13th and 14th century. The original Mongolian instrument was the DOMRA. It has 2 or 3 strings, an oval body and has a long thin neck.

The Domra remained in Russia after the Mongolian was driven away, and got a very popular instrument. Through centuries the instrument develops into the balalaika with 3 strings, as we know today. By different reasons, religious ban etc. the popularity decreased and the instrument was nearly totally forgotten.

The young musician and landownerson Vasilij Andreyev rediscovered the instrument. On his fathers estate, he heard a farmhand play on the balalaika.. He was so enthusiastic that he stopped his career as a violinist, to play the balalaika. For may words and a lot of money, he got an instrument maker to build the first concert balalaika in the world. In 1884 he had his first solo concert. It was a great success, so he decided to make a balalaika orchestra. Vasilij Andreyev

He developed 6 different balalaika types, and in 1888 this orchestra had the first, of a lot of concerts.

Some year later the original Domra type was found in a little village in a nearly unchanged form. With this domra as a model, 7 different models of domra were developed. These domratypes was included in the existing balalaika orchestra. Another old Russian folkinstrument the Gusli was reconstructed and added to the orchestra together with traditional Russian percussion instruments as rattles, wooden spoons and tambourine. In 1918 celebrated Andreyev his unique complete orchestra's 25 years anniversary.

This year Evgeni Pavlovski was 6 year old. He lived with his big family in a little village in the middle of Siberia, where music was a part of their busy days. When he was 18 years old, by the reason of political troubles, he had to flee to China, to finish his education in Harbin, . Later he travelled via Shanghai to Denmark.

After some time as probably the only balalaika playing farmhand in Denmark he moved to Copenhagen. Here he began to play in Tjufarins balalaika orchestra. In 1936 he started his own orchestra with young Russian emigrants. The same year they played in the Danish broadcast.

After World War II Evgeni Pavlovski assembled his orchestra again. Now it also counted a number of Danish members, and the orchestra played concerts all around the country. The orchestra also recorded quite a lot of records on his own recording company, named "Rodnye Zvuki". Even if the Danish public bought only a few records, he sold a lot of records to Russian emigrant colonies all around the word. Professional competition from the big recording companies in Germany and in the USA later stopped the recording success.

In the mid 50'es the orchestra was in trouble because of a lack of players. Evgeni Pavlovski started a boy orchestra and later a girl orchestra. The members were later adopted by the main orchestra. Several are still playing in the orchestra.

Today main part of the orchestra's members are Danish, but they try to hold the old original Russian style.

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