Alexander Lokshin

Alexander Lazarevich Lokshin was born on 19 September 1920 in Biysk, a town in Siberia on the northern edge of the Altai Mountains in Central Asia. His family was of Baltic-Jewish descent. After initial training as a pianist in Novosibirsk, he went to the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow in 1937, where he studied with Nikolai Myaskovsky and Heinrich Litinsky. After completing his military service as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Red Army, he continued his studies at the Moscow Conservatory. However, as he set poems by Charles Baudelaire (‘Les fleurs du mal’) to music in his final thesis, which the censorship authorities branded as Western decadent, he was not allowed to take his exams.
From 1945 to 1948, Lokshin worked as an instrumentation teacher at the Moscow Conservatory until he fell out of favour again and was suspended because he had covered works by Mahler, Berg and Stravinsky in his lessons. From 1949 until his death in 1987, Lokshin worked as a freelance composer. Well-known composer colleagues and conductors such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Boris Tishchenko, as well as Yevgeny Mravinsky and Rudolf Barshai, strongly supported Lokshin's works.
In addition to numerous songs and choirs, film and stage music, his catalogue includes the following works: 11 symphonies, Piano Concerto, Hungarian Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Dramatic Overture for Orchestra, ‘Margarete. Three Scenes from ‘Faust’’ for soprano and orchestra and several chamber music works (including a clarinet quintet, string quintet, violin sonata and piano variations). However, his compositions, which were close to Expressionism, were rarely performed during his lifetime.
Rudolf Barschai in particular championed Lokschin's works, but was unable to prevent his oeuvre from always remaining a marginal phenomenon in concert programmes. Barschai, who premiered more than half of Lokschin's symphonies, said in 1989, two years after the composer's death: ‘For me, Lokschin is one of the greatest composers of our century. His time is now coming, and it is up to us musicians to ensure that his works are properly performed’.
Alexander Lokshin died on 11 June 1987 in Moscow.

Biography may be reprinted free of charge in programme booklets with the following credits: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes/Sikorski Music Publishers