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Rodion Shchedrin
December 16, 1932 -
born in Moscow, Russia, composed during the Contemporary period
Biography
The son of a music theorist and writer, composer Rodion Shchedrin was encouraged in his musical interests from a very young age. Initial studies at the Moscow Conservatory were interrupted by Russia's participation in World War II, but In 1948 he entered the Moscow Choral School, and three years later he returned to the Conservatory. There he studied piano with Yakov Fliyer and composition with Yuri Shaporin. At the same time, his interest in Russian folk music came to the surface; he led a 1951 trip to Belorussia to collect folk songs, some of which turn up in his early Piano Quintet (1952). Folk songs also play a role in his brilliant Piano Concerto No. 1 (1954), which he wrote and premiered as his graduation composition from the Conservatory.

Not long after his graduation, Shchedrin began what has become one of his best-known works, the ballet Konek-gorbunok (The little humpbacked horse, 1956), which quickly became a staple of the Bolshoi ballet. Another very popular work in Russia was the opera Not love alone (1961). In the mid-'60s, Shchedrin started to incorporate modern sounds and techniques like tone-rows and aleatorics (chance elements) into works like his Symphony No. 2 (1962-1965) and the Piano Concerto No.