Boris Tishchenko

Tishchenko's music style and composing manner shows him to be a typical representative of the Leningrad composers' school. He was very much influenced by music of his teachers Dmitri Shostakovich and Galina Ustvolskaya, turning these influences in his own way. He tried to use some experimental and modernist ideas like twelve-tone or aleatoric techniques, but was much more attached to the native traditions of his homeland. He demonstrated a kind of originality, scoring his Second Cello Concerto for 48 cellos, 12 double-basses and percussion (1969). Ten years later, however, he re-orchestrated it for a more practical combination.

He was honored by Shostakovich's orchestration of his First Cello Concerto, and repaid his master by the orchestration, editing and transcription of a few scores by Shostakovich. Tishchenko's Requiem, to the forbidden poem by Anna Akhmatova, written in the period of political stagnation in 1966, was a courageous cultural gesture.

Tishchenko was born in Leningrad. He studied at the Leningrad Musical College from 1954 to 1957. There he learnt composition under Galina Ustvolskaya and piano under Mikhelis. Then from 1957 to 1963 he studied composition with Vadim Salmanov, Victor Voloshinov and Orest Evlakhov, and piano with L. Logovinski at the Leningrad Conservatory. He took a postgraduate course with the composer Dmitri Shostakovich from 1962 to 1965. He subsequently joined the faculty of the Leningrad Conservatory from 1965, and became a professor there in 1986.

Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (Russian Бори́с Ива́нович Ти́щенко; 23 March 1939 – 9 December 2010) was a Russian and Soviet composer and pianist.