Gnessin, Mikhail Fabianovich (1883–1957)

Russian composer and teacher. He studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatol Liadov at the St Petersburg Conservatory and in Germany 1911–14. He settled in Rostov in 1914, in Moscow in 1923, and became professor at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1936; his pupils included Aram Khachaturian and Tikhon Khrennikov. His work is influenced by Jewish music.

Works Stage operas Youth of Abraham (1921–23) and The Maccabees; incidental music for plays, including Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Rex (1915), Gogol's The Revisor, Blok's The Rose and the Cross.

Voices and orchestra The Conqueror Worm (after Poe) for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra (1913); songs with orchestra.

Orchestral Symphonic Fragment (after Shelley), Song of Adonis, and Fantasia in the Jewish Style for orchestra.

Chamber Requiem for piano quintet, Variations on Jewish Themes and Azerbaijan Folksongs for string quartet, sextet Adygeya; violin and piano sonata in G minor, Sonata-Ballade for cello and piano.

Songs song cycles to words by Alexander Blok, Sologub; Jewish folk-song arrangements.