ABSTRACT
The emergence of Boris Tishchenko on the musical scene was so spectacular that many musicians believed him to be a second Prokofiev. It was due to his combining in one person the qualities of bright, highly original composer and no less remarkable, uncommon pianist playing the most complicated opuses by Prokofiev; furthermore, his keen interest in the musical theatre, ballet in particular and the conspicuous, easily remembered utterances were equally captivating. Tishchenko won the attention of the general public while he was still a conservatoire student when owing to his strikingly early maturity (according to the current standards) he, at the age of 19, wrote his First Violin Concerto Op. 9 (later to be revised) and when he was 20-his Second string Quartet, a work still considered to be one of his best opuses. During the year he graduated from the Leningrad Conservatoire (1962) he wrote the song-cycle Sad songs, unforgettable to date, and by the time he completed a postgraduate course (also at the Leningrad Conservatoire, in 1965) he had to his credit the ballet The Twelve after Alexander Blok, included by several ballet companies into their repertoire; the First Cello Concerto for which the great Shostakovich provided his own version of orchestration; a work for orchestra, Suzdal (the name of an old Russian town famous for its remarkable architectural monuments), which captured the attention of music-lovers by a new type of synthesis of modern musical idioms and the Russian archaics; Twelve Inventions for Organ, to become a staple item in the concert programmes of organ-players; and the Third Piano sonata whose performance by the composer himself revealed his singularity as a pianist.
