Daniil Grigor'yevich Frenkel'

Daniil Grigor'yevich Frenkel' (Kiev, 1906 – Leningrad, 1984) was a Russian composer whose career was largely spent in Leningrad. His output spans virtually all the principal genres and is rooted in a conservative style close to the Classical and Romantic traditions, distinguished by melodic expressiveness and a dramatic character of writing.

He began his training at the Odessa Conservatory, where he studied piano with Ya.I. Tkach from 1925 to 1928. He then moved to Leningrad, the city in which he would spend most of his life. There he attended the Second Leningrad Music Technical College (1928–1929) and completed his education privately: with A.P. Gladkovsky he received lessons in theoretical subjects and composition (1932–1935), and with Steinberg he studied orchestration (1936–1938).

His professional career began in the 1920s as a pianist, first at the Perekop Theatre in Ba'lta (1922–1924) and later at the Soyuzkino cinema in Leningrad (1928–1932). During the Second World War he directed the music of the drama theatre in Orenburg Province (1941–1944), and afterwards at the V.F. Kommissarzhevskaya Drama Theatre in Leningrad (1945–1947). In the postwar years (1945–1953) he directed the amateur music ensemble of the Soviet Navy.

His catalogue includes several operas, among them Zakon i faraon (1933) and Ugryum-reka (1950), as well as ballets, cantatas, operettas, symphonies and chamber music. His orchestral works include three symphonies (1972–1975) and a Piano Concerto (1954). His piano music ranges from the children's album Yunosheskiy al'bom (1937) to pieces from the 1970s. The extent of his later reception is not known with certainty, so his legacy lies chiefly in the Soviet music of his time and in the tradition of Russian opera and symphony.