Mikael Tariverdiev
USSR, 1957–1996
Soviet-Armenian composer (1931–1996), born in Tbilisi and one of the USSR's most beloved film composers, with music for some 130 films. His intimate, chamber-scaled scores for The Irony of Fate and Seventeen Moments of Spring — spare piano, aching melody and understated jazz and Baroque touches — became part of the Soviet cultural memory, alongside song cycles on the poetry of Pasternak, Voznesensky and others.