The war years were the most difficult time of my life. There was real famine in Moscow. The water froze inside the houses. There was no heat. I didn't have shoes, so I received American boots. They were two sizes too big and made me look like Charlie Chaplin. We ate canned pork rations from the Americans. We were happy and grateful to the Americans. All the people felt this.

During the war, I studied cello and composition at the Moscow Conservatory. Shostakovich was my composition professor. He taught us Mahler and Stravinsky pieces because he knew all these composers. It was kept underground, but in this way we learned all this culture. We were also interested in records. It was rare to get Western recordings, but this way we could perfect our knowledge of the Western repertoire. I listened to Pablo Casals, which was a big change for me. Without hearing Casals, I would never have advanced as I did.

In 1948 the first severe crash occurred in my life when Stalin put out his decree on "formalism." There was a bulletin board in the Moscow Conservatory. They posted