Alexander Lokshin

• Born in 1920 in Biysk (in south-west Siberia), child of a Baltic Jewish family, grew up in Novosibirsk
• from 1937 studied composition with Nikolai Myaskovsky and Heinrich Litinsky at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow
• with his setting of texts by Charles Baudelaire as his examination thesis, which was rejected, he first aroused the disapproval of the Soviet censorship authorities
• In 1944, Lokshin became a teacher of instrumentation at the Moscow Conservatory
• fell out of favour because of his supposedly bourgeois-western-decadent attitude, after his suspension he worked as a freelance composer from 1949 until his death in 1987
• Lokschin's compositions, which were close to Expressionism, were rarely performed during his
hardly performed during his lifetime
• Rudolf Barschai described the long underestimated Lokschin posthumously as ‘one of the greatest composers of our century’, whose time was yet to come
• in addition to 11 symphonies, concertos, film and stage music, chamber music and a rich oeuvre of songs, his Margarete. Three Scenes from ‘Faust’ for soprano and orchestra (1967), the 5th Symphony ‘Shakespeare Sonnets’ and the String Quintet (1978) also met with great interest in the West

Alexander Lokschin's works with Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski:

• String Quintet (1978)
• Margarete. Drei Szenen from ‘Faust’ for soprano and chamber orchestra (1967)
• *Symphony No. 1 „Requiem”, 2 „Greek Epigrams”, 4 „Sinfonia stretta” und 5 „Shakespeare Sonnets”*