David Hershfeld (* August 28, 1911, Bobrynets, Chernihiv Province, Russian Empire - † January 26, 2005, Bradenton, USA) was a Ukrainian and Moldovan conductor, composer, and Honored Artist of the Moldovan SSR.
His father, Hryhorii Isaakovych, was a violinist and composer.
He graduated from a seven-year school, played wind instruments in the orchestra of the Kotovsky Cavalry Division in Berdychiv and other military orchestras.
He studied at the labor department of the Berdychiv branch of the Kyiv Chemical Technology Institute.
In 1930-1934, he studied at the Odesa Beethoven Music and Theater Institute - bassoon and French horn classes, composition and music theory with M. Vilinsky.
After graduation, he was sent to work in the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in Balta, and then to Tiraspol, where he became the head of the music and production department of the Tiraspol Ukrainian Theater. He created the Tiraspol Moldovan National Music and Drama Theater, the House of Art Education for Children (later the Palace of Pioneers and Schoolchildren), and in 1937 founded the first children's music school in the Ukrainian SSR, which he headed until 1940.
In 1937, he became the head of the Moldovan branch of the Union of Composers of Ukraine, which he helped to found, and in 1940 it was transformed into the Union of Composers of Moldova.
Together with the composer Leonid Kornianu, he collected Moldovan musical folklore on the left bank of the Dniester, and in 1939, he published an annotated collection of Moldovan folk songs with sheet music. He also published samples of non-song musical folklore, mostly traditional Moldovan dance tunes.
In 1940, he founded and headed the Moldovan State Conservatory.
In 1942, he founded the Doina Song and Dance Ensemble, an orchestra under the direction of Shiko Aranov, with soloists and a dance group under his general direction. They performed in evacuation hospitals and at the fronts. In 1942, he was the first to receive the title of Honored Artist of the Moldavian SSR.
Postwar period, persecution, and emigration
In 1944, he returned to Chisinau, helped to restore the Union of Composers of the Moldavian SSR and the Chisinau Conservatory, became its artistic director, chairman of the board of the Moldavian Music and Choral Society, and director of the Chisinau Music School, which he founded in 1945. He also contributed to the creation of an opera studio at the conservatory.
In 1947, he was criticized in the newspaper "Soviet Moldova" as part of the struggle against "rootless cosmopolitans" and was dismissed from all his positions, but he did not stop composing music without work.
During the Khrushchev Thaw of 1956, he was reinstated as the chairman of the Union of Composers of the Moldavian SSR, director of the Chisinau Conservatory and Music School, and until 1964 headed the Moldovan Radio Broadcasting.
In 1955, he founded the Moldovan State Opera and Ballet Theater in Chisinau, and wrote the first Moldovan opera, Grozovan, for its premiere (based on a libretto by V. Russu about the wise man Grigori Grozovan). The second premiere was his opera Aurelia (1959).
In 1964, the next "purge" came, he again left all his positions and in 1966 settled in Sochi, where he headed the Sochi Philharmonic until 1992.
In 1992, he moved to the United States and settled in Bradenton, Florida.
Works.
He is the author of three operas - the third is "Sergei Lazo" (1980),
the ballet Radda, based on Maxim Gorky's story Makar Chudra,
a musical comedy,
three cantatas,
a concerto for violin and orchestra,
three Moldovan dance suites,
songs and romances based on poems by Moldovan poets and Sergei Yesenin,
arrangements of Moldovan folk dances,
music for dramatic performances,
a song about Sochi called "Festive Sochi",
an oratorio in memory of Andrei Sakharov with lyrics by Mikhail Khazin,
music for the first film comedy by the Moldova Film Studio, Out of Place (1958, script by Jon Drutse).
Both in Sochi and in the United States, he did not stop writing compositions to the words of Moldovan and Romanian poets - the first season of the Moldovan State Opera and Ballet Theater in 1980 opened with the opera Sergei Lazo, with Maria Biesu playing the role of Olga, and in the United States - a series of romances based on the works of Mihai Eminescu.
Teacher, family
As a teacher, among others, he trained Borys Raisov, Maria Biesha, and Valentyna Savytska.
His son, Alfred Hershfeld, is a Moldovan conductor and composer, chief conductor of the Moldovan Opera and Ballet Theater, and founder of the Moldovan National Chamber Orchestra.
