Sofia Gubaidulina

Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025) was a composer born in Chistopol, in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union. Her music, shaped by her religious faith, drew official censure in the USSR before Gidon Kremer's advocacy of her violin concerto Offertorium brought her international attention in the early 1980s. From 1992 she lived in Appen, near Hamburg. Gubaidulina studied at the Kazan Conservatory and then at the Moscow Conservatory with Nikolai Peiko and Vissarion Shebalin. Shostakovich encouraged her to keep to her own path.