Kostyantyn Fedorovych Dan'kevych

Kostyantyn Fedorovych Dan'kevych was born in Odesa in December 1905 and died in Kiev in February 1984. A central figure in twentieth-century Ukrainian music, he is remembered above all for his operas, although he also wrote symphonies, symphonic poems, chamber music, songs and film scores.

He trained at the Odesa Institute of Music and Theatre, graduating in 1929, and joined its teaching staff immediately. He later taught at and directed the institution, from 1948 to 1951, and was then invited to teach at the Kiev Conservatory. Between 1956 and 1967 he presided over the Union of Composers of Ukraine, and in 1978 he received the Shevchenko Prize.

His style grew out of the national school founded by Lysenko, but by the mid-1930s he had aligned himself with the dogma of Socialist Realism. The First Symphony of 1937, dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution, and the ballet Lileya of 1939 illustrate this phase; the latter was a great success in its day. His principal work is the opera Bohdan Khmel'nyts'ky, which deals with the wars of liberation waged by the Ukrainian people against the Poles in the seventeenth century. It premiered in Kiev in 1951 and was harshly criticised as formalist and excessively nationalist, above all for failing to emphasise the "eternal friendship" between Russians and Ukrainians. Dan'kevych prepared a revised version, premiered in 1953, which did receive general approval, and the work gained international recognition in that second version.

His music, eclectic in character, rests on nineteenth-century Russian models, especially Mussorgsky, with touches of contemporary colour and a strong rhythmic drive. His legacy is revealing of the political pressures that Soviet creative work endured after the Second World War, since his difficulties with opera showed that the end of the conflict did not bring the relaxation that had been expected.