When I saw Carmen Suite at the Bolshoi Theatre, I was simply astounded by Rodion Shchedrin’s brilliant transcription of Bizet’s music. It is like an original piece of music and is worthy of a place alongside the best transcriptions by Liszt and Busoni. Outwardly, everything is so simple in Shchedrin’s transcription: none of Bizet’s melodies are changed, merely the accents are shifted- strings and percussion instruments naturally and smoothly replace the singers’ voices and full orchestra… At first, I know, many people found Shchedrin’s experiment impudent, almost blasphemous. But what have we got? – a fine ballet, in fact a great new success for Soviet music… Let’s have more of these experiments!