I have always been delighted by the diversity of his [Yury Shaporin] work. The younger generation of Soviet musicians know Shaporin as a great composer, an outstanding teacher and someone who never neglected his public duties. But the musicians of my generation also know him as an excellent conductor and pianist. He always enjoyed great success as a conductor at the Gorky Drama Tehatre in Leningrad. It was there, by the way, that he conducted his own first-rate music for the play The Flea (based on Leskov), which impressed me with its unaffected national colouring, and skilful use of Russian folk instruments. I think that this work has a right to a place beside the widely acknowledged symphony- cantata On the Field of Kulikovo, the oratorio The Ballad of the Battle for the Russian Land, the opera The Decembrists and the composer’s celebrated romances.