Pyotr Leshchenko(1898-1954)

Pyotr Leshchenko is a Russian singer, performer of folk dances. Pyotr's mother had an absolute ear for music, knew many folk songs and sang well, which had a corresponding influence on the formation of Pyotr's personality, who also discovered extraordinary musical abilities from early childhood. At the age of eight, thanks to his ability to sing and dance, he was taken into the Church Soldiers' Choir, then assigned to the People's Parish School. Due to his voice breaking, by the age of 17 he was left without a livelihood and decided to join the army. He graduated from the infantry school for warrant officers in Kiev, and in March 1917, through the 40th reserve regiment in Odessa, he was sent to the Romanian front. In August 1917 he was seriously wounded and until mid-January 1918 he was treated in a Kishinyov hospital. During this time, Kishinyov became part of Romania and, thus, Leshchenko involuntarily became an emigrant. He sang in a church choir, in an opera troupe, and in the fall of 1919 he began performing as part of a dance group and toured the cities of Romania a lot. In 1925 he worked in Paris for several months, then performed in Sweden, Turkey, Greece, and the Middle East. In 1931, the singer made his first recordings in Berlin, and in 1933, he recorded in Vienna at the Columbia studio. But the most famous recordings were made in 1935 in London. Thanks to radio broadcasts, Leshchenko became a popular singer. Having moved with his entire family to permanent residence in Bucharest, he and his companions opened a restaurant in which he performed as the 'star' of the program. Leshchenko's repertoire was very wide: he performed tangos, foxtrots, romances, ditties, Russian folk, Ukrainian, Romanian and gypsy songs.