Zlata Tkach


Zlata Moiseyevna Tkach was a Moldovan composer and music educator. She was the first woman to become a professional composer in Moldova.

Biography

Zlota Beyrihman was born in the Bessarabian village of Lozovo to Moisey Bentsionovich Beyrihman and his wife Freida Mendelevna Koifman. When Zlota was still a young child, the family moved to Chişinău where she went to the Romanian primary school for girls and studied violin from her father.
During World War II, Zloty was evacuated with her mother to Central Asia, but was separated from her in transit and ended up in the city of Namangan in Uzbekistan, where there was typhus and typhoid fever. Zloty stayed in a Drogobycha orphanage and went to secondary school. During this time, she composed her first song, "Sailors". In 1943 she was reunited with her family after the liberation of the city, and returned to Chişinău.
Zlota studied physics and mathematics at the University of Chişinău and then entered the Musicology Department of the Kishinev Conservatory, where she graduated in 1952. She studied composition with Leonid Gurov, and violin with I.L. Daylisa. From 1952 to 1962 she taught at a music school in Chişinău. In 1957 she continued her studies in the Conservatory's composition class, and after graduating in 1962 became a teacher there and continued to work at the Conservatory until the end of her life. In 1986 she became an Associate Professor, and in 1993 a full Professor of composition.
Tkach was honored as the first woman to become a professional composer in Moldova. She was the Honored Artist of the Moldavian SSR, winner of State Prize of Moldova, and Chevalier of the Order of Work Merit.
Zlata Tkach married the Moldovan musicologist Efim Markovich Tkach, who was an author and editor of books in Russian and Moldovan. She died in 2006 in Chişinău.

Works

Tkach composed about 800 works, including sonatas, string quartets, suites, vocal music, choral and instrumental works, cantatas, opera, ballet, instrumental miniatures, children's songs, and music for drama, cinema and theater. Her successful children's opera "Goat with Three Kids" was revised several times and finally reintroduced as "The Impostor Wolf" in 1983. Compositions include: