Vissarion Shebalin

After graduating from Moscow Conservatory, he worked there as a professor, and in 1935 became also a head of the composition class at the Gnessin State Musical College.

Among his students were Ester Mägi, Veljo Tormis, Lydia Auster, Edison Denisov,[2] Grigory Frid,[3] Tikhon Khrennikov, Karen Khachaturian, Aleksandra Pakhmutova, Galina Konstantinovna Smirnova, Asya Sultanova, Yevgania Yosifovna Yakhina,[4] and others.

Shebalin was one of the most cultured and erudite composers of his generation; his serious intellectual style and a certain academic approach to composition make him close to Myaskovsky.

[5] Despite that, just a few months before his death from a third stroke in 1963, he completed his fifth symphony, described by Shostakovich as "a brilliant creative work, filled with highest emotions, optimistic and full of life."

He wrote another opera The Sun above the Steppe (Солнце над степью, Solntse nad stepyu) (1958) and also the music comedy The Bridegroom from the Embassy (Жених из посольства, Zhenikh iz posolstva) (1942).

He also completed the opera The Fair at Sorochyntsi by Modest Mussorgsky in 1930 and reconstructed a long missing pas de deux from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake from a violin 'repetiteur' rediscovered in 1953.