GUBAIDULINA, SOFIA  

Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol’ in the Tatar Soviet Republic in 1931. She studied the piano at the Music Academy in Kazan after the war. In 1949 she entered the Kazan Conservatory where she studied composition with Leman and subsequently with Nikolay Peyko, a pupil of Myaskovsky and Rakov. She continued her studies with Vissarion Shebalin, another pupil of Myaskovsky. She had encouragement from Dmitry Shostakovich, who advised her to ignore hostile criticism from the official musical establishment, and earned a living in Russia principally by writing film music, though, at the same time, her works were widely heard abroad. With the political changes in the Soviet Union towards the late 1980s, she was able to travel outside the country, and since 1992 she has been living in a small town near Hamburg, Germany.