Olga Daniel-Beck was born on February 9, 1921, in Volchansk, Ukraine. There Olga began learning to play the piano. Her father, Alexander Daniel-Bek, originally from Artsakh (Karabakh), was an engineer by profession. He graduated from the Polytechnic and Technological Institutes of Kyiv and Kharkiv. There he met his future wife, doctor Lydia Pilipenko. The family tried to give a versatile education to their daughters Olga and Nelly, who, in addition to secondary school, studied piano.
In 1934, the family moved to Yerevan. The father served as deputy chairman of the executive committee of the city council and supervised the construction of the Hoktemberyan cannery. The mother worked at the Second City Hospital. She was the founder of a biochemical laboratory in Yerevan. Subsequently, Lydia Pilipenko was awarded the Order of Lenin for saving children taken from besieged Leningrad (St. Petersburg).
In Yerevan, Olga and Nelly entered Secondary School after Alexander Pushkin and continued studying piano with Olga Babasyan. From the first years of training, it became clear to the mentor that young Olga was endowed with bright musical abilities. She was hardworking, and she looked natural on stage.
Olga Daniel-Bek, having graduated from the Yerevan State Conservatory in 1940, began working in the vocal classes of Professor Tamara Shakhnazaryan and the great Gohar Gasparyan, as well as in the violin class of Karp Dombaev. The creative collaboration with many students, who later became famous singers, continued for many years. Among them are Edvard Baghdasaryan, Jacques Douvalian, Arthur Aydinyan, Vladimir Perchyan, Konstantin Simonyan, Eleonora Melkumyan, and others. Over the years, Olga Daniel-Bek accompanied singers Seda Kurbanyan, Ligia Mamadzhanyan, Anna Sarajyan, and many other performers in solo concerts.
For a certain period, Olga Daniel-Bek also worked at the Yerevan Special Boarding School for Wind Instruments (now Children’s Music School No. 13).
The name of Olga Daniel-Bek, the concertmaster, was often found in the posters of solo concerts of string players. Among them were famous violinists Hakob Vardanyan, Karen Kostanyan, Georgy Khodzhaev, and others.
While working at the Yerevan State Conservatory, Olga Daniel-Bek became one of the first accompanists of the State Operetta Theater founded in 1942, devoting a certain period of her accompanist activity to this theatre. Olga Daniel-Bek also collaborated with violinist Karen Kostanyan.
Among the significant events of Olga’s accompanist activity, one should mention the concerts (October 28 and 29, 1954) of the State Chapel of Armenia (artistic director A. Abgaryan, conductor E. Tsaturyan) with the participation of singer Shara Talyan. Some works by Mikhail Glinka, Sergei Taneyev, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gioachino Rossini, Carl Maria von Weber, Komitas, and Romanos Melikian were performed.
For several years, Olga Daniel-Bek carried out an educational and accompanist mission under contract in Mongolia (1963-1965), Egypt (1965-1968), and Cambodia (1968-1969). In Cambodia, she worked as an accompanist for the Royal Ballet of Cambodia.
In 1988, after the sudden death of her eldest son Igor, Olga Daniel-Bek moved to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) to live with her younger son, Alexander Kesayan, an oboist in the orchestra of the Small Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after Modest Mussorgsky. Later, Alexander became director of the State Leningrad Symphony Orchestra (chief conductor was Veronica Dudarova). In Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Olga Daniel-Bek began to accompany her grandson, a violinist, who studied at a music school.