Alexander Lokshin: Nocturne

Here’s a little secret: All uploads from this week I made in a single day, because I was on vacation; now I’m back (and I felt like playing a bit piano), so here is a little extra piece for today, a short but sweet Nocturne. Aleksandr Lazarevich Lokshin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ла́заревич Локши́н) (1920–1987) was a Soviet composer of classical music. He was born on 19 September 1920 in the town of Biysk, in the Altai Region, Western Siberia, and died in Moscow on 11 June 1987. An admirer of Mahler and Alban Berg, he created his own musical language; he wrote eleven symphonies plus symphonic works including Les Fleurs du Mal (1939, on Baudelaire’s poems), Three Scenes from Goethe’s Faust (1973, 1980), the cantata Mater Dolorosa (1977, on verses from Akhmatova’s Requiem). Only his Symphony No 4 is purely instrumental; all his other symphonies include vocal parts. Symphony No 3 by Lokshin was written on Kipling’s verses, and a ballet Fedra was staged to music from