Andrey Volkonsky RIP

[Pierre]

Anyone heard of this dude? Apparently he died on 16 September, though I haven't read any press notices about this. Has he fallen off most people's radars?

FWIW, I know he was something of a pioneer in avant garde music within the Soviet Union. Having grown up in the West before being taken back to Russia by his parents, he was familiar with Stravinsky's work and got into trouble for it. He is said to have written some of the first 12-tone works in the Soviet Union (though that's to forget the work of Roslavets earlier in the century).

Anyone else heard his music?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I haven't heard his music, but I know a few things.

He came from an old, well-established Russian aristocratic family that somehow managed to survive throughout the Soviet period. He began as an avant-garde composer and musician, but finding it difficult to get performed under Soviet conditions, turned to early music. He was a harpsichordist, and was one of the few people in Russia at the time who was promoting Renaissance and early Baroque music.

Anecdote: a member of the Estonian early music ensemble Hortus Musicus told me they were able to get started when Volkonsky donated a pile of scores to them in the 1970s. Such scores were hard to get hold of at the time.