Faier, Iurii Fedorovich

Born Jan. 5 (17), 1890, in Kiev; died Aug. 3, 1971, in Moscow. Soviet conductor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1951). Member of the CPSU from 1941.

Faier graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1919. From 1906 he was a solo violinist and concertmaster with various orchestras. In 1916 he became an orchestral soloist and from 1923 to 1963 he served as conductor for the Bolshoi Theater Ballet.

Faier’s repertoire included more than 50 ballets, and he was involved in production of Guère’s The Red Poppy (1927; known as The Red Flower since 1957), Asaf ev’s The Flame of Paris (1933) and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray (1936), Minkus’s Don Quixote (1940), Prokofiev’s Cinderella (1945) and Romeo and Juliet (1946), and Khachaturian’s Gaiane (1957) and Spartacus (1958). Faier is the author of About Myself, About Music, About Ballet (1970).

Faier was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1941, 1946, 1947, and 1950), the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.