Around the Music Festival

Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin passed away on the 29th at a hospital in Munich, Germany. He was 92. He was a leading composer of the former Soviet Union. His wife, Maya Plisetskaya, who passed away ten years ago, was a leading ballerina of the former Soviet Union.

He composed seven operas, five ballets, three symphonies, and fourteen concertos. He served as president of the Composers’ Union from 1973 to 1990.

He was born in Moscow and raised in a family where his father was a music theorist, educator, and music activist.He enrolled in the Central Music School attached to the Moscow Conservatory in 1941, but was evacuated to Samara and Kuibyshev during World War II.

From 1944 to 1950, he studied at the Moscow Choral School, where his father also taught. In 1947, he won the top prize in a student composition competition judged by composer Aram Khachaturian. He was accepted into the Composers’ Union in his fourth year.

He then studied at the Moscow Conservatory (1950–1955), taking piano lessons from Yakov Flier and composition lessons from Vissarion Shebalin. In 1958, he married ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who was seven years his senior.

From the 1960s, he embarked on a prolific compositional career, achieving international fame in 1967 with the success of his Carmen Suite, in which Plisetskaya performed.

In addition to his compositional work, he also performed as a pianist. From 1965, he taught composition at the conservatory, but in 1968, the Soviet military invasion of Czechoslovakia erupted. Refusing to sign a letter supporting this action led to conflict with the party leadership, and he left the conservatory in 1969.

From the 1970s to the 1980s, he composed the ballets “Anna Karenina” and “The Seagull”, the opera “Dead Souls”, choral works, piano pieces, and more. In 1989, he composed his Third Concerto for Orchestra, “Old Russian Circus Music”, for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s centennial celebration.That same year, 1989, he was elected to the Supreme Member of the Soviet Union.

However, in 1991 he emigrated to Germany with Plisetskaya.Based in Munich, he composed concertos for Mstislav Rostropovich, Maxim Vengerov, Yuri Bashmet, and Olli Mustonen, and worked tirelessly for the rehabilitation of Rostropovich—who had been exiled—and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, in their homeland.

He has received numerous awards in Russia, including the title of People’s Artist of the USSR. He has also won many international awards, such as the Grammy Award, and has served in numerous roles, including as a judge for international competitions.

In 2022, he donated his apartment on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, where he had lived for nearly 30 years, to the authorities. It is now the Prisekskaya Apartment Museum, which also recreates the room where Shchedrin composed.

PHOTO：Moscow Philharmonic Society