Даниил Покрасс

Daniel Pokrass (1905–1954) was a Soviet composer, conductor, pianist, laureate of the USSR State Prize (1941), brother of Samuel, Arkady and Dmitry Pokrass. He was born in Kiev and studied at the Kiev Conservatory with a prominent pianist Prof. Felix Blumenfeld, graduating in 1921. After that, Daniel moved to Moscow where he pursued a study in composition and worked at the Palas Theatre. Daniel started composing with Dmitry in 1932, and Pokrass Brothers had been collaborating extensively for the rest of his life. They came to prominence in the middle of the thirties, known for popular hits from feature films and documentaries, as well as military marches, communist propaganda "poster-songs" and odes praising Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, and Semyon Budyonny. While much of their art had been later criticized for blatant obsequiousness to the communist regime, at the time Pokrass tunes and songs were broadly popular all across the Soviet Union. In 1936, People's Commissar for Transport in the USSR Lazar Kaganovich became a patron for Pokrass Brothers. With his protection, Dmitry Pokrass was appointed as an artistic director of the jazz orchestra at the Central House of Culture of Railwaymen, and Daniel had been working together with him in the ensemble, curating other dance and music groups at the Central House of Culture as well. The composer had a romantic relationship with Stalin's daughter-in-law, dancer Julia (Judith) Meltzer (1911-1968). Joseph Stalin was convinced that Meltzer had encouraged his son Yakov Dzhugashvili to surrender to the Germans during the Second World War, and he had Julia interrogated and imprisoned for that. The Soviet leader was outraged when he heard about the couple, and even though Daniel Pokrass was never directly persecuted, he felt a heavy pressure and criticism from the press, promoters and music officials, leading to a tremendous stress and early death from a heart attack at the age of 49.