Moscow – Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who created the famous ballets “Anna Karenina” and “Carmen Suite,” has died in Germany at the age of 92, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater announced Friday.
He and his wife of 57 years, the legendary ballerina Maya PLISETSKAYA, dominated the Soviet and Russian cultural scene in the second half of the last century. She died in 2015.
Shchedrin’s work ranged from choral music and concertos to opera and ballet, blending Russian folk influences, classical traditions, and avant-garde techniques. His 1972 ballet “Anna Karenina” remains a staple in major theaters around the world.
The Bolshoi Theater, where Shchedrin worked for many years, praised him in a statement for his “priceless creative heritage.”
“This is a huge tragedy and an irreparable loss for the entire art world,” the statement said.
Shchedrin, born into a family of musicians in Moscow in 1932, graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
He married PLISETSKAYA in 1958, writing “The Seagull” and “The Lady With the Sun,” based on the works of Anton Chekhov, as well as “Anna Karenina.”
No one escaped controversy during the Soviet era. PLISETSKAYA in particular was watched by the KGB and for a time banned from traveling abroad.
Some of Shchedrin’s works, particularly the “Carmen Suite,” received a frosty reception from Soviet officials, with then-culture minister Ekaterina Furtseva denouncing it as crude. “The music of the opera has been mutilated,” she declared, according to Russia’s state news agency TASS.
In 1973, Shchedrin became president of the Russian Composers’ Union, replacing Dmitry Shostakovich.
Since the late 1980s, Shchedrin has divided his time between Moscow, Munich and Switzerland. Asked by Russian television in 2012 for his three greatest wishes, he replied: “To be with my wife forever.”
