To the composer Rodion Shchedrin

With this portrait the Moscow musicologist traces the career of Rodion Shchedrin from his days as a chorister to international fame as a composer. While the main emphasis is on analysis of his works of the 1980s and 1990s, Cholopova also considers Shchedrin’s achievements as a pianist, as president of the Russian Federation of Composers, as a politician and as a human being. A picture emerges of a versatile composer who enjoys experimentation and yet who always remembers the needs of the listener in the second half of the 20th Century.