Dmitry Khvorostovsky -"Cranes"

This is a beautiful and moving song from the Soviet era in honour of fallen veterans. It is elegiac, and it is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Dmitri Khvorostovsky sings it with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and The Style of Five accompany him.

TEXT:

It seems to me that sometimes that soldiers
Who didn't come home from the blood-soaked battlefields,
Weren't laid to rest in the earth,
But turned into white cranes...

That ever since that time long ago
They have been flying, calling,
Maybe that's why we often, and sadly,
Fall silent, staring into the sky!

The tired flock flies and flies up in the sky,
It flies in the fog, as the day dies,
And in this formation there is a space;
Maybe it is a place for me.

The day will come when I will also drift
With the flock of the cranes in the same blue-grey haze,
Calling from the sky, in the language of the birds,
The names of you I have left on earth.

It seems to me sometimes that soldiers
Who didn't come home from the blood-soaked battlefields,
Weren't laid to rest in the earth,
But turned into white cranes