Isaac Dunaevsky
Isaac Dunaevsky was a Soviet composer and conductor, born on 30 January 1900 in Lokhvytsia, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire. He wrote twelve operettas, four ballets, music for several dozen films, and many popular Soviet songs. He was named People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1950 and received two Stalin Prizes, in 1941 and 1951.
Born into a Jewish family, Dunaevsky was the son of a bank employee. He showed unusual musical gifts as a child: by the age of five he could play melodies of marches and waltzes by ear on the piano and improvise at family gatherings. He attended visiting opera and drama companies and began violin lessons at eight. After his family moved to Kharkiv in 1910, he studied violin at the Kharkiv Music School with Konstantin Gorsky and then I. Yu. Akhron. He continued with Akhron at the Kharkiv Conservatory, composed extensively as a student, and studied composition with Semyon Bohatyryov.
After graduating from the conservatory in 1919, Dunaevsky joined the Kharkiv Drama Theatre, directed by Nikolai Sinelnikov. He began as the orchestra's concertmaster violinist, then became a conductor and eventually head of the theatre's music department. He made his debut as a theatre composer by writing music for every new production, while also lecturing on music, organizing musical studios and clubs, directing amateur musical activities, and contributing to newspapers.
At Vladimir Khenkin's invitation, he moved to Moscow in 1924 and became musical director of the Hermitage Theatre. From 1926 he led the music departments of the Theatre of Satire and the Moscow Operetta Theatre, where his operetta The Grooms was successfully staged in 1927. From 1929 to 1934, or according to another account until 1935, he was musical director and chief conductor of the Leningrad Music Hall. During this period he began collaborating with Leonid Utyosov and created jazz programmes drawing on folk-song themes, including Jazz at the Turn and the 1933 revue Music Shop.
As one of the founders of Soviet operetta and the musical film comedy, Dunaevsky made music a central element of film drama. His collaboration with director Grigori Aleksandrov and poet Vasily Lebedev-Kumach on Jolly Fellows (1934) brought him wide recognition. Between 1934 and 1940 he composed music for sixteen films, often taking part in the sound recording himself by playing piano and singing. Dmitri Shostakovich particularly admired the overture to The Children of Captain Grant (1936), which Dunaevsky himself regarded among his finest works. He also served as artistic director of the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers' song-and-dance ensemble in 1937 and led the Leningrad Union of Composers from 1937 to 1941.
Among Dunaevsky's operettas are Both Ours and Yours, The Grooms, Knives, Golden Valley, The Straw Hat, Roads to Happiness, Free Wind, The Clown's Son, and White Acacia. His ballet scores include The Faun's Rest, Murzilka, and The Bride and the Machine Gun. His film music included scores for Circus, Volga-Volga, Bright Path, Spring, and Kuban Cossacks. His final operetta, White Acacia (1955), was completed after his death by Kirill Molchanov.
Dunaevsky died in Moscow on 25 July 1955, aged fifty-five, of a heart spasm. He was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.