While Beethoven inevitably hogs the limelight on his birthday every December 16, I think composer Rodion Shchedrin deserves at least a mention this year, as he’s just turned 90. If you know Shchedrin at all, it’s probably for his audacious reworking of Bizet themes into his “Carmen Suite” (1967) for strings and percussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QysD8zCfGTs
He also wrote a series of concertos for orchestra. The most notorious of these is called “Naughty Limericks” (1963). My favorite is probably the Concerto for Orchestra No. 3 (1989), subtitled “Old Russian Circus Music.”
The liturgical work “The Sealed Angel” (1988), for choir and flute, is based on a story by Nikolay Leskov. If you’re interested in hearing the whole thing, the individual movements are posted separately here, in the form of a YouTube playlist.
Finally, Shchedrin plays Rachmaninoff with Yevgeny Kissin and Daniil Trifanov – piano six-hands!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wArcUiRCHSE
If you’re curious as to how to pronounce Shchedrin’s last name, as a classical music announcer I learned that the “shch” should be said as in “freSH CHeese” (i.e. “SH-CHedrin”).
Happy birthday, Rodion Shchedrin!
PHOTO: The composer with his late wife, Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, for whom he frequently composed. (The “Carmen Suite” was written for her.) Plisetskaya died in 2015 at the age of 89.