Boris Tishchenko

Boris Tishchenko was a Soviet and Russian composer. He was born on March 23, 1939, in Leningrad, and became one of the notable musical figures associated with the Leningrad and Saint Petersburg school of composition. In 1987 he was named People's Artist of the RSFSR.

In 1957 he graduated from the music college attached to the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied with Galina Ustvolskaya. In 1962 he graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory. He studied composition with Vadim Salmanov, Viktor Voloshinov, and Orest Yevlakhov, and later continued postgraduate study with Dmitri Shostakovich in 1965. Tishchenko later dedicated his Third and Fifth Symphonies to Shostakovich. As a pianist at the conservatory, he studied with Abram Logovinsky.

From 1965 onward, Tishchenko worked at the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory. He became an associate professor in 1980 and a professor in 1986, and he trained a number of well-known composers. He also appeared as a pianist, often performing his own works.

Tishchenko wrote music in many different genres and was also the author of articles, reviews, brochures, and annotations. His work tended toward dramatic and epic expression, and most of his compositions were large in scale. He continued the symphonic tradition of Dmitri Shostakovich. Among the interpreters of his music were Mstislav Rostropovich, Viktor Liberman, Ivan Monighetti, Valery Polyakov, and Sergei Stadler.

His principal works include eight symphonies; a Requiem on verses by Anna Akhmatova; Requiem Aeternam in memory of Princess Galyani Vadhana of Thailand; nine concertos for various solo instruments; a sonata for recorders and organ; three ballets, including The Buzzing Fly based on Korney Chukovsky, The Twelve after Alexander Blok, and Yaroslavna after The Tale of Igor's Campaign; the opera The Stolen Sun; the operetta Tarakanishche after Chukovsky; music for theater productions and films; eleven piano sonatas; six string quartets; a piano quintet; Portraits for piano four hands; Inventions and other works for organ; the choreo-symphonic cycle Beatrice, a set of five symphonies inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy; and a concerto for flute, piano, and strings.

His achievements were widely recognized. He won the prize at the Prague Spring International Competition for Young Composers in 1966. In 1978 he received the Mikhail Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR for Symphony of Courage, the concerto for flute, piano, and string orchestra, and his Fifth Symphony dedicated to the memory of Shostakovich. He was also named Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1978, received the Mayor of Saint Petersburg Prize in 1995, and was awarded the Government of the Russian Federation Prize in Culture in 2008 for the Dante-symphonies cycle under the general title Beatrice.

Boris Tishchenko died of cancer on December 9, 2010, in Saint Petersburg, at the age of seventy-one. He was buried at the Literatorskie Footbridges section of Volkov Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.