When Tikhon Khrennikov, general secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, visited Budapest, it fell to me to interview him for Hungarian Radio. I was perfectly aware that I was talking to a figure of unparalleled power in Soviet cultural life, a hard-liner, one who was sly enough to keep his position regardless of who happened to be boss in the Kremlin, from Stalin through Khrushchev to Brezhnev. Born in 1913 (a contemporary of Witold Lutosławski), he was appointed to head the Union of Soviet Composers in 1948 and only relinquished the post in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. He died at the age of ninety-four, in 2007.

I was bold enough to provoke him by citing the names of Soviet composers I knew were refusing to toe the party line. Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov were among them. I shall never forget Khrennikov’s reply, nor the tone of his voice: “These composers are not typical examples of true Soviet artists. They do not represent what we regard as genuinely Soviet music. You should rather hear Tishchenko …” and he listed a few more names I can no longer remember.

In other words, Denisov was under a cloud. The conditions under which he was forced to work can be guessed, thanks to reminiscences published by Mstislav Rostropovich and countless others who either managed to defect or had no other choice but to stay in the Soviet Union.

When I met Denisov in Moscow in the late 1970s, life for the cultural opposition had grown somewhat easier. He was allowed, for instance, to publish his compositions in Hungary and even in Austria. I remember seeing him in the company of a director of Universal Edition who wanted to talk to him about the opera L’Ecume des jours, based on the eponymous novel by Boris Vian (1920–59). I think he was pleased to meet us, coming as we did from a part of Europe he may have admired for its freedom. He was quiet and soft-spoken but there was no mistaking his self-confidence.

Despite the thaw in his country, he engaged the services of an acquaintance to deliver the script of his replies by hand.