Samuil Yulyevich Urbakh was a Soviet composer, born on February 7, 1908, in Bialystok and died on April 19, 1969, in Moscow.
He studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Professor Vissarion Shebalin and completed his studies there in 1937. After that he worked in Tajikistan until 1941, then in Sverdlovsk in 1941–1942, and from 1942 onward he lived and worked in Moscow.
From 1952 to 1959 Urbakh served as executive secretary of the commission for symphonic and chamber music of the Moscow organization of the Union of Composers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. From 1955 to 1959 he was deputy chairman of the creative commission of the Union of Composers of the USSR.
He was the author of the first Tajik opera, Bibi and Bobo, or The Noble Bridegroom. In this work, principles of national musical thinking were combined with traditional devices of European comic opera. The libretto was by S. Saidmuradov and Ya. Galitsky; it was first given in concert performance in 1959 and staged in 1961 at the Tajik Opera and Ballet Theatre, with a second version presented there in 1964.
Among his selected works were the operas Anor (Pomegranate, staged in 1940 at the same theater) and The Road to Happiness (1940); a symphony-ballad from 1955, revised in 1957; three symphonic suites on Tajik themes written in 1944, 1945, and 1954; the suite on Tajik themes for symphony orchestra In the Alleys of Dushanbe (1963); and Tajik Sketches (1948). He also wrote two piano sonatas, both from 1936.
Urbakh composed songs for voice and piano, including Do Not Be Angry with a Friend and To My Beloved, both on texts by Abulqasim Lahuti from 1953, as well as a vocalise written for the Third International Tchaikovsky Competition. He also wrote music for dramatic productions, including Ellen Jones (Machinal) by Sophie Treadwell in Moscow in 1933, Mobilization of Feelings by N. Bazilevsky in Moscow in 1932, Smoke of the Fatherland by the Tur brothers in Sverdlovsk in 1942, The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais in Moscow in 1944, and Whom Time Obeys by the Tur brothers and Lev Sheinin in Moscow in 1946. He also collaborated with S. Balasanyan on the musical spectacle Lola (Festival of Tulips), staged in 1939.
He was buried at Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.