Isaak Dunaevsky

Isaak Osipovich Dunayevsky (Russian: Исаак Осипович Дунаевский; also transliterated as Dunaevski or Dunaevsky; 30 January [O.S. 18 January] 1900 – 25 July 1955) was a Soviet film composer and conductor of the 1930s and 1940s, who achieved huge success in music for operetta and film comedies, frequently working with the film director Grigori Aleksandrov. He is considered one of the greatest Soviet composers of all time. Many of his songs are very well known and held in high regard in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Dunayevsky was born to a Jewish family in Lokhvitsa, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire in 1900. He studied at the Kharkov Musical School in 1910 where he studied violin under Konstanty Gorski and Joseph Achron. During this period he started to study the theory of music under Semyon Bogatyrev (1890–1960). He graduated in 1919 from the Kharkov Conservatory. At first he was a violinist, the leader of the orchestra in Kharkov. Then he started a conducting career. In 1924 he went to Moscow to run the Theatre Hermitage. After that he worked in Leningrad (1929–1941) as a director and conductor of the "Music-Hall" (1929–34) and then moved to Moscow to work on his operettas and film music.

Dunayevsky wrote 14 operettas, 3 ballets, 3 cantatas, 80 choruses, 80 songs and romances, music for 88 plays and 42 films, 43 compositions for light music orchestra and 12 for jazz orchestra, 17 melodeclamations, 52 compositions for symphony orchestra and 47 piano compositions and a string quartet.

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