The first composer ever to have had seven of his works staged at the famed Bolshoi Theater, RODION SHCHEDRIN is regarded by many as one of the principal successors to Prokofiev and Shostakovich. For over a decade, he was the head of the Russian Federation of the Union of Composers, having succeeded the founder and then head, Dmitri Shostakovich, at the request of the Union members and Shostakovich. In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin awarded Shchedrin the Russian State Prize for The Sealed Angel, a work for mixed chorus and solo flute based on the Russian Orthodox liturgy. Many renowned conductors have championed Shchedrin’s music, among them Leonard Bernstein, Erich Leinsdorf, Eugene Ormandy, Leopold Stokowski, and Mstislav Rostropovich. The composer, who will be 67 in December, has succeeded in synthesizing the traditional and the new, using virtually every contemporary technique of composition. His Carmen Ballet for Strings and Percussion (utilizing themes from Bizet’s opera) is his most widely-known and often-performed work, having received more than 500 performances to date.

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