Solomon Lobel

Solomon Lobel was a Moldavian Soviet composer and teacher. He was born on January 27, 1910, in Iași, Romania, and was named an Honored Artist of the Moldavian SSR in 1960.

He was born into the family of Moishe Lobel and Khana-Perl Lobel, both natives of Iași. His father died at the front during the First World War in 1917. Lobel studied at the law faculty of the University of Iași and at the same time attended the Iași Conservatory, where he studied piano with I. Sibianu and A. Burado and music theory with C. Georgescu.

In 1938 he entered the Bucharest Academy of Music, studying piano with F. Muzicescu and counterpoint with M. Jora, though he completed only the full course in music theory. On June 16, 1940, several of his works were performed for the first time at a concert of Mikhail Jora's composition class. After moving to Soviet Bessarabia in late 1940, he continued his studies at the Chișinău Conservatory in the composition class of Ștefan Neaga from 1940 to 1941.

During the Second World War he served in the active army from 1941 to 1942, then worked as accompanist in the Large Ensemble of Red Army Amateur Performance of the Main Administration of Aviation Construction, which he soon led as musical director and choir conductor. After demobilization at the beginning of 1946, he resumed his studies at the Chișinău Conservatory in the composition class of L. S. Gurov. In 1947 he became a member of the Union of Composers of the Moldavian SSR. After graduating from the conservatory in 1949, he remained there to teach a course in specialized harmony; from 1962 he was an associate professor, and from 1979 a professor at the G. Muzicescu Chișinău Institute of Arts.

Symphonic genres predominated in Lobel's creative work. He was described as the only Moldavian symphonist and the author of the first symphony to use the intonational system of Moldavian folk music. His works include seven symphonies written between 1949 and 1977, among them the Sixth Symphony, "In Memory of the Victims of Fascism" (1975); concertos with orchestra for violin (1956) and piano (1978); seven notebooks of piano pieces; three string quartets composed between 1968 and 1978; four sonatas, including works for piano and clarinet and for cello and piano; other piano pieces, romances, arrangements of Moldavian folk songs, and choral works.

Among his other compositions are the musical comedy "On the Bank of the Ural" (1943); choreographic scenes based on Kazakh musical material, including "The Horsemen of Batyr Srym" (1944) and "Jiin" (1944); the choral work "Poem about Khay Livshits" to words by Liviu Deleanu for unaccompanied mixed choir and soloist (1965); and songs to poems by Emilian Bukov, Mihai Eminescu, and C. Condri. He died on April 2, 1981, in Chișinău, Moldavian SSR, Soviet Union, perishing together with his wife in a fire at the Composers' House in Chișinău.