Beschreibung:

Title: Partizan Zheleznyak - 1936 Paul Robeson's Russian Music from Stalin's Moscow Author: Blanter, Matvey, composer Place: Moscow Publisher: Date: 1936 Description: 3 pp. Lyrics (in Russian) by Michaila Golodnovo. Paul Robeson’s copy, signed by him at the top of front cover. Probably purchased by this Renaissance man – athlete, lawyer, actor, singer – on one of his 1930s trips to Stalin’s Russia, when he decided to send his nine year-old son to be educated there, in a culture he believed to be free of American-style racism. During those years, he also took an interest in Soviet music, and perhaps thought of recording an English version of Partizan Zheleznyak, the ballad of a Soviet soldier’s heroic death in battle, with the rhythm of a Red Army marching song – a prelude to Blanter’s internationally-famous Katyusha (1938). Robeson did later record the Internationale in English, which, even with his superb voice, lost something in the translation (“…long live our Soviet motherland…”) and presaged the problems that would later haunt him because of his embrace of Communism during the Cold War; with 1933 sheet music for “Emperor Jones”, based on the film, starring Robeson, of Eugene O’Neill’s play. 5pp. with a striking Art Deco cover design by Benjamin “Jori” Harris, who later illustrated sheet music for Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Lot Amendments Condition: Light wear to edges from handling; very good. Item number: 230346