Guest
Olga Kamieńska (Sung in Russian) – Czernyje glaza (Black Eyes) Tango (Oskar Strok) & Septet pod dyr. H. Golda (Henryk Gold’s Septet), Columbia 1934 (Polish) NOTE: Olga KAMIEŃSKA was an outstanding pre-war Polish interpreter of old romances. Born in 1905 to a wealthy Russian-Polish family in Grozny (today's Chechen Republic), she received a thorough education, including music. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, her family fled Imperial Russia and settled in Poland in 1920. Having joined the Warsaw higher class of the 1920s, Olga was reluctant to perform on public stages, although her outstanding alto voice and theatrical talent were well known among Warsaw society. In 1933 she however started performances at cafe chantant “Femina“, to become perhaps the best romance performer in Poland ever. She has left behind quite a number of recordings for Columbia, Odeon and Syrena-Electro. She married a Polish army officer and led a successful life until outbreak of the 2nd WW in Sept 1939. After the collapse of the Polish defence, she and her husband managed to make their way to France, where they stayed until the end of the war. In 1945 Kamieńska returned to Poland and settled first in Łódź, then in Warsaw, where she began performing on the radio and giving occasional recitals. However, as the ex-wife of a pre-war Polish officer and a member of the upper classes, Kamieńska did not enjoy much recognition by the critics in communist Poland. She died in Waarsaw in 1981 almost completely forgotten and paralysed. This beautiful tango was composed by Latvian composer and pianist Oskar Strok, author of another outstanding tango/ballad from the 1930s, 'Sleep my heart quietly'. In this clip, the record’s label incorrectly states the composer's name as Petr Leshchenko. He did sing and record this tango in Russian and he made it famous in Europe.
