Nikolai Rakov (1908–1990) was a Soviet composer, conductor, pianist, violinist, and music teacher. He was born on 14 March 1908 in Kaluga, into the family of the merchant Pyotr Rakov. He began piano lessons at the age of seven and soon became absorbed in the violin. By the age of twelve he was performing professionally in the Kaluga municipal orchestra, including demanding music by J. S. Bach.
From 1920 he studied at a music school and worked in Kaluga as a violinist and pianist, giving public concerts in cinemas, clubs, and the city garden. He also took part in ethnographic expeditions through villages of Kaluga Governorate, collecting folk-song texts and melodies performed by rural musicians. These materials were published in Maria Sheremeteva's book A Wedding in Gamayunovshchina of Kaluga District and later informed works including the Russian Overture and numerous piano pieces.
Rakov briefly entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1922 but returned to Kaluga after a month because he had nowhere to live in Moscow. He nevertheless took private lessons there with David Krein, and in 1924 entered the A. G. and N. G. Rubinstein Music College in Moscow, studying violin with Abram Berlin and graduating in 1930. Between 1924 and 1930 he appeared as a violinist and pianist in Moscow and other cities; before turning twenty, he was a violinist in the Vakhtangov Theatre orchestra. His early compositions included March, Lullaby, and Petrushka for wind quartet. In 1931 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied composition with Reinhold Glière.
Rakov taught at the Moscow Regional Music College in 1933–1934 and joined the Moscow Conservatory faculty in 1932. He became professor of orchestration in 1943 and, over 58 years at the conservatory, taught composers including Edison Denisov, Andrei Eshpai, Vano Muradeli, and Alfred Schnittke. He also wrote two major orchestration manuals, including Problems in Orchestration (1975). From 1949 he appeared as a conductor and pianist, performing his own music as well as works from the classical repertoire.
His output encompasses orchestral, chamber, vocal, and pedagogical music, with instrumental music at its center. He became particularly known for music for children and young performers, while his larger concert works were played by musicians including David Oistrakh and Oleg Kagan. Russian folk song and the folklore of other peoples of the Soviet Union were important sources for such works as the Mari Suite, the First Symphony, the Russian Overture, and piano pieces on folk themes. His music is noted for colorful, refined orchestration and predominantly lyrical, luminous, and dreamlike moods. Important works include four symphonies, the Sinfonietta for string orchestra, two violin concertos, four piano concertos for piano and string orchestra, and concertos for clarinet and oboe. He received the second-degree Stalin Prize in 1946 for his Violin Concerto and was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1989. Rakov died of prostate cancer in Moscow on 3 November 1990 and was buried in New Donskoy Cemetery.