Aleksandr Lokshin

Aleksandr Lazarevich Lokshin (Russian: Александр Лазаревич Локшин) (1920–1987) was a Russian composer of classical music. He was born on September 19, 1920, in the town of Biysk, in the Altai Region, Western Siberia, and died in Moscow on June 11, 1987.

An admirer of Mahler and Alban Berg, he created his own musical language; he wrote eleven symphonies plus symphonic works including "Les Fleurs du Mal" (1939, on Baudelaire's poems), "Three Scenes from Goethe's Faust" (1973, 1980), the cantata "Mater Dolorosa" (1977, on verses from Akhmatova's "Requiem"), etc. Only his Symphony No.4 is purely instrumental; all other symphonies include vocal parts. Symphony No.3 by Lokshin was written on Kipling's verses, a ballet "Fedra" was staged on music of Symphony No.4. He also wrote a cycle of piano variations for Maria Grinberg (1953) and another one for Elena Kuschnerova (1982).

Composer's father Lazar Lokshin was an accountant, and his mother Maria Korotkina was a midwife. Lokshin's sister Maria was born in 1914. The family of the composer suffered from communist repression since Lokshin's father had been classified as a capitalist because of their small farm business. Their land and cattle were confiscated, and Maria was expelled from Medical School for a joke.

After the family moved to Novosibirsk, the young Lokshin was trained at school by excellent teachers who had been exiled to Siberia from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Renowned pianist Alexei Stein, former professor of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, laid the foundations of Lokshin's piano playing.

In 1936 Lokshin arrived to Moscow with Alexei Stein's recommendation letter, was examined by Heinrich Neuhaus (Russian: Генрих Нейгауз), Director of the Moscow Conservatory, and Lokshin was accepted as a student of the Moscow Central Music School and then, after 6 months, as a student of the Moscow Conservatory. He studied composition with the composer Nikolai Myaskovsky.

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