“Dark-Eyed Cossack Girl”

Leonid Kharitonov – “Dark-Eyed Cossack Girl”

Russian Cossack Folk Song. Music – M. Blanter, Lyrics – I. Selvinsky
This song was composed especially for Leonid Kharitonov.
“New Year’s Kidnapping” (Musical Movie)–1969.

Song Description

This song is about a Cossack Soldier who once met a dark-eyed Cossack girl and asked her to shoe his horse. The girl agreed and asked for a very small price. The man asked her name since he liked her very much. The girl refused to tell her name and answered that the Cossack would hear it right from under his horse’s shoes when he rides it. The Cossack started riding his horse and guessing her name – Masha? Zina? Dasha? Nina?.. No, they were all wrong… KATYA, KATYA, KATERINA – the horseshoes knocked her name…!!! Since those times wherever the Cossack went he always whispered “KATYA, KATYA, KATERINA”… He was thinking that that was an obsession since he already had another girlfriend. But the strange thing was that he could never take that Cossack girl’s name out of his chest as it was a never ending song inside there…

Critical Commentary

Many Russian songs are serious or sad, but Kharitonov is also known for singing comic songs or arias. The composer Matvey Blanter wrote Dark-Eyed Cossack Girl (Russian: Черноглазая казачка) especially for him in 1966. Kharitonov’s definitive performance was recorded in 1969. Again he is celebrating Chaliapin’s legacy as the first modern bass to successfully fuse drama – and humour – with pure musical technique, as in Chaliapin’s performance of Dark Eyes.

Moreover this performance of Kharitonov’s demonstrates the Ensemble’s style, which in the era of A.V. and B.A. Alexandrov encouraged soloists to stay in tune in spite of any vibrato, any emotional acting, or any humour. Therefore, although the song involves laughter, he laughs elegantly in tune. All the while he is making faces and humorous gestures, his vocal tone and pitch remain spot-on. That is the achievement of this kind of performance: while the audience and the other musicians laugh so much at Kharitonov’s clowning, at the same time they are aware of highly disciplined singing, and the performance remains perfectly musical. This performance demonstrates that discipline is fundamental to musical elegance.

Lyrics:

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