Profound Slavonic emotion and thrilling virtuosity distinguish many of Rodion Shchedrin's compositions. Even though he has long since become a citizen of the world, the composer born in Moscow has held on to his Russian origins and has never lost his ties with Russian musical folklore and poetry. In Tanya - Katya Shchedrin uses the syllabic content of the two women's names alone to develop a melodic structure that has real emotional depth. A broad arc reaches all the way from the roots of traditional Russian song to the use of contemporary techniques of composition. These ''songs without words'' create vivid profiles by purely musical means - even though we never really find out who is concealed behind these two mysterious names.