Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who created the celebrated ballets Anna Karenina and the Carmen Suite, has died in Germany at age of 92, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre said on Friday.
He and his wife of 57 years, legendary ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, dominated the Soviet and Russian cultural scene for the latter part 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 technique. His 1972 ballet Anna Karenina remains a staple for major theaters around the world.
The Bolshoi Theatre, where Shchedrin worked for many years, praised him in a statement for his “priceless creative legacy”.
“This is a huge tragedy and an irreparable loss for the entire world of art,” it said.
Born into a family of musicians in Moscow in 1932, Shchedrin graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
He married Plisetskaya in 1958, writing The Seagull and The Lady With the Dog, based on the works of Anton Chekhov, as well as Anna Karenina for her.
Neither escaped controversy in the Soviet era. Plisetskaya in particular was watched by the KGB and banned from traveling abroad for a time.
Some of Shchedrin’s work, particularly the Carmen Suite, received a frosty reception from Soviet officials, with then culture minister Ekaterina Furtseva decrying it as crude. “The music of the opera is mutilated,” she declared, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
In 1973, Shchedrin became president of the Union of Composers of Russia, replacing Dmitri Shostakovich.
From the late 1980s onward, Shchedrin split 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 for ever.”