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About Russian Songs
Universally regarded as the "King of the Russian Tango," Pyotr Leshchenko was born in the Ukraine in 1898. In his early childhood he sang in a church choir and learned how to play the guitar and the balalaika. After the Bolshevik revolution he took some ballet lessons to perform with his Latvian wife who was a dancer. Their act was a mixture of ballet, folklore dance and European tango, and they became so popular that it led to tours to Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Germany and Britain. It was at Riga, when he improvised a kind of a gypsy/tango singing to make up for the absence of his pregnant wife that he discovered he could sing in front of an audience, and soon he began to perform regularly. Leshchenko performed for European nobles and Russian emigres at his own cabaret in Bucharest. The first part of every performance would typically be dedicated to gypsy music, but during the second part Leshchenko would dress up in a tuxedo, with a white silk handkerchief and sing and dance Argentine tango. Although his recordings were banned in the Soviet Union because the style was deemed counter-revolutionary, secretly he was extremely popular and his music was widely bootlegged - his breathtakingly beautiful soft baritone endeared him to millions of fans both in Russia and throughout Europe. Presented here are historic, vintage recordings of Leshchenko performing Russian songs in his trademark style. All selections newly remastered.
