David Fedov
David Fedov, born David Grigoryevich Feydman and originally bearing the surname Feydman, was a Moldavian Soviet composer, pianist, and conductor. He was born on October 24, 1915, in Chisinau, Bessarabia, and died there on February 8, 1984. In 1966 he was named Honored Artist of the Moldavian SSR.
He was born into a large musical family. His father, Gedali Shmul-Gershevich Feydman, was a klezmer trumpeter who also played piano and accordion, and many members of the family were musicians. Fedov received his first musical training from his father. By the age of eleven, in 1926, he had been admitted to a private conservatory in Chisinau, later known as Unirea, and then studied piano at the Municipal Conservatory in the class of Y. M. Guz.
While still a conservatory student from 1932 to 1934, he began performing in the orchestra of the Orpheum cinema under Charles Breitburd. After graduating in 1934, he moved to Bucharest, where he worked as a soloist and accompanist on radio and in popular entertainment ensembles. In 1940 he returned to Chisinau, where he worked for the city radio committee, the district House of Officers, and then the newly established philharmonic. During the Second World War he served in the active army, and later performed on the fronts in solo concerts, increasingly turning toward composition.
After returning to Chisinau in 1945, Fedov entered the Chisinau State Conservatory to study composition with Stefan Neaga and, after Neaga's death, with Leonid Gurov. During his student years he wrote a piano sonata, a scherzo for symphony orchestra in 1947, music for Rakhmil Portnoy's play The Song of the Girl from Lapushna, choral and vocal miniatures, and his well-known dance suite Joc in 1949. That suite entered the repertoire of Moldavian dance ensembles as well as Igor Moiseyev's dance ensemble. Around the same time he began working in the jazz variety orchestra Bukuria, the best-known ensemble in the republic, directed by Shiko Aranov, and adopted the stage pseudonym Fedov.
After graduating from the conservatory in 1952, he became artistic director and chief conductor of the orchestra of the Moldavian Radio Committee, later the variety-symphony orchestra of Moldavian radio and television. He also led the Moldavian folk music ensemble that under his direction received its modern name, Fluierash. From 1958 to 1971 he taught at the Chisinau Conservatory, later the G. Muzicescu Chisinau Institute of Arts. From 1971 onward he appeared as a soloist of the Chisinau Philharmonic and worked as a répétiteur.
Fedov's compositions included overtures for symphony orchestra, two concertos from 1952 and 1970, and numerous works for folk instrument orchestra, among them a concert piece for taragot, the fantasy Moldova Sings and Dances, and concert pieces for fluier, trombone, clarinet, flute, and piccolo. He also wrote compositions for violin, trombone, trumpet, flute, clarinet, French horn, piccolo, and bassoon with piano accompaniment, Three Virtuosic Pieces for Piano from 1965, choral suites, songs on verses by Moldavian poets including Liviu Deleanu, Emilian Bukov, and Petru Zadnipru, and arrangements of Moldavian folk songs. More than twenty Moldavian, Gagauz, and Bulgarian dances written by him were published as a musical supplement to the collection Folk Dances of Moldova in 1957.
Among his best-known works were his Piano Concerto, performed by Gita Strakhilevich, Lyudmila Vaverko, and Mark Zeltser, the song Lyana as performed by Tamara Cheban, and the concert piece for violin and piano Morishka from 1958. He also wrote popular songs including Come to Moldova, Casa Mare, and White Stork. His Suite Moldova was released on a gramophone record performed by a symphony orchestra under Richard Muller-Lampertz for Electrola in Germany.
Fedov also composed music for films, including Ataman Kodr, also known as Haiduk Ballad, which included the popular song Hora Fetelor, Lullaby, Beyond the City Limits, and When the Storks Fly Away, as well as the animated films Little Stork Kich and Maritsa. For his music to Ataman Kodr he received a prize at the All-Union Film Festival in 1959.