Rodion Shchedrin

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin (born 1932 in Moscow) is a Russian composer and pianist whose prolific output spans opera, ballet, concertos and choral music. A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied under Yuri Shaporin, he has served as Chairman of the Union of Composers of Russia and is one of the most honoured figures in Russian musical life.

His most internationally celebrated work is Carmen Suite (1967), an arrangement of themes from Bizet's opera scored daringly for strings and percussion alone, conceived for Maya Plisetskaya (his wife) and the Bolshoi Ballet. The score was initially suppressed by Soviet cultural authorities but became internationally successful. It has since been choreographed dozens of times and remains a staple of the ballet repertoire. Matthew Bourne used Shchedrin's Carmen Suite as the basis for The Car Man (2000), which relocated the story to a 1960s American setting.

Shchedrin's other major works include the opera Not Love Alone (1961), the ballet Anna Karenina (1972), five piano concertos, and the oratorio Lenin in the People's Heart. He has lived primarily in Munich since the 1990s.