Rodion Shchedrin is internationally recognized as the pre-eminent contemporary composer of the Russian modern school. His autobiography looks back over an eventful life and provides a variety of stimulating insights behind the facade of the international music scene. Along the way Shchedrin elaborates highly personal views on the political situation and many other aspects of life in the former Soviet Union, turning an unsparing eye on the machinery of ideological repression exerted on artists as...

• My Genealogical Tree
• Childhood
• Return to Moscow
• The Choral Institute
• Conservatoire
• The World Around
• In Search of Folk-Music
• Three Successes
• Cinematc Myths and the Death of my Father
• Maya Plistskaya
• Some Sinners and Saints
• First Opera
• Were There Musical Dissidents in the Former Soviet Union
• Establishment Composers
• Carmen Suite
• Poetoria, the Prague Spring and the Lenin Oratorio
• Dead Souls
• Who is a Composer
• How I Found Myself Occupying Shostak...