This interview changed the title of this book literally at the last minute. I had more or less despaired of ever finding the cassette on which I had recorded our conversation, until—as it happens sometimes, mysteriously, inexplicably—it turned up out of the blue when I least expected it. The title reads from now on: Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers.

I met Schnittke at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 1988, that is, two years after the publication of the Hungarian edition of this book. There was no question in my mind, I simply had to grab that unique opportunity. Twenty-two years on, it has now found its place in the American edition.

We conversed in German, which Schnittke spoke fluently, if sometimes haltingly, with perhaps just a trace of Russian accent. Born to a father who came from Frankfurt am Main, Schnittke had spent the years between 1946 and 1948 in Austria, where he began his music education. Hence his command of the language. He remembered those years fondly, with their unforgettable musical experiences, such as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Josef Krips, Bruckner’s Eighth under Klemperer, or the Abduction from the Seraglio under Knappertsbusch. He wrote: “I recall a basic music tone, a certain Mozart-Schubert sound, which I carried within me for decades and which was confirmed upon my stay in Austria some thirty years later.”

I remember his slight figure, which even then, ten years before his death, struck me as emaciated, all the more highlighting his eyes, deep-set with an intense glow that radiated his genius as much as it may have mirrored his physical weakness.

I believe I first heard music by Schnittke in the late 1980s at the Prague Spring Festival: his Concert for Chorus (1984/85) with its sumptuous sound took my breath away. It was timeless music of the kind Schnittke talked about in our interview, perhaps music that he “received as a gift,” to quote his own words. Some time later I heard his Moz-Art à la Haydn (1977) for two violins and eleven strings—a haunting experience with gestures of the Baroque conjured up out of context, following a logic I could not quite fathom.