7 April] – 21 January 1931) was a Russian and Soviet composer and conductor of the Imperial Opera St-Petersburg, pianist, and teacher.

He was born in Elisavetgrad, which was in 2016 renamed to Kropyvnytskyi (in present-day Ukraine), Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire, the son of Mikhail Frantsevich Blumenfeld, of Austrian Jewish origin, and Maria Szymanowska.

Then he studied composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and piano under Fedor Stein between 1881 and 1885.

From 1918 to 1922, he was the director of the Music-drama school of Mykola Lysenko in Kiev, where, amongst others, Vladimir Horowitz was a pupil in his masterclasses.

His virtuoso pieces for piano in particular have enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years[citation needed].