Alemdar Sabitovich Karamanov, son of a Russian mother and Turkish father, was born in Simferopol, inland Crimea, on 10 September 1934. Surviving the German occupation from July 1942 to May 1944, he went to the Moscow Conservatory in 1953. Here, among contemporaries including Shchedrin, Denisov, Volkonsky, Gubaidulina and Schnittke, he worked with Bogatiryov (1953-58), completing his studies under Kabalevsky and Khrennikov, head of the Composers’ Union. Vladimir Natanson, a disciple of Feinberg, was his piano teacher, Spurning party benefits and the Red Square Establishment, he returned home to Simferopol in the mid-1960s, a gaunt, reclusive figure, urban by night, rural by day, resigned to a struggle for existence, food-parcels, and gifts from well-wi...