The formidable Russian conductor has died at the age of eighty-seven. One of his signal feats was leading the world première of Alfred Schnittke's First Symphony in 1974 — a venture that would have been daring in any context, but was particularly courageous in Brezhnev's Soviet Union. His Soviet-era recording of the Shostakovich Fourth, embedded above, remains incomparable; listen to the strings at 14:35.