Nikolai Rechmensky was a Soviet composer and folklorist. He was born in Moscow on 22 December 1897; the article’s infobox also gives 22 November as an alternative birth date. In 1927 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied composition with Reinhold Glière.
Rechmensky taught at the music technical school attached to the Moscow Conservatory from 1927 to 1940 and, until 1938, at the Music School of the October Revolution, which he helped organize. He also taught at the Moscow People’s Conservatory and led the student practical-training sector at the Moscow Conservatory. From 1932 he was a member of the Union of Soviet Composers. He received the title Honored Artist of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR in 1940.
His works include the opera A Feast in Time of Plague (1928), two symphonies (1927 and 1930), and the symphonic poems The Stormy Petrel (1935) and Aslambek (1939). He also wrote suites, works for violin and piano, pieces for bayan, balalaika, guitar, and domra, choral works, and songs.
Rechmensky recorded and arranged Chechen and Ingush songs. These informed works including Suite on Chechen Folk Themes (1939), Overture on Ingush Themes (1940), Symphonic Suite in Memory of Aslambek Sheripov (1958), Old Chechen March (1960), and Suite on Chechen-Ingush Folk Themes (1960). He wrote instructional books on playing the bayan and reference works on folk instruments and music culture. He died in Moscow on 23 October 1963 and was buried at the New Donskoye Cemetery.