Sulkhan Tsintsadze

Sulkhan Fyodorovich Tsintsadze (1925–1991) was one of Georgia's foremost composers. Tsintsadze studied the cello until 1942 with E.N. Kapelniski in Tbilisi at the Gymnasium of Music. He furthered his studies of the cello at the Conservatory of Tbilisi with K. Minjar. From the years 1945 to 1953 he went to the Moscow Conservatory to study the cello with Semyon Matveyevich Kozolupov and composition with Semyon Semyonovich Bogatyryov. He began his musical career in the 1940s as the cellist in the Georgian State String Quartet. His first composition, based on Georgian folk songs and being a collection of miniatures for string quartet, was an immediate success. He also wrote several operas, ballets, symphonies and concertos, but it was his compositions for string quartet which came to take pride of place amongst his works and which made a notable contribution to Georgian music. Tsintsadze's compositions are based on the traditional forms as well as styles and characteristics used by composers such as Shostakovich and Shebalin. Georgian folklore is ever present in his music. Sulkhan Tsintsadze was one of Georgia's leading composers. He was awarded the People's Artist of Georgia (1961) and People's Artist of the USSR (1987) titles, and was a holder of the USSR Stalin Prize (1950), Zakharia Paliashvili Prize (1977), and Shota Rustaveli Prize (1981).