Valeri Kikta (born 1941) is a Ukrainian classical composer. He was educated at the Moscow Choral College, then at the Moscow Conservatoire under Semyon Bogatyryov and Tikhon Khrennikov. On the recommendation of Shostakovich he moved on to post-graduate study.
Kikta's compositions include ballets, symphonic, organ and choral works. These include Beyond the Verge of Darkness for tenor and orchestra, and Frescos of the St. Sofia Cathedral of Kiev for harp and orchestra.

The son of a composer, Otto Ketting studied trumpet at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and composition with his father. He played trumpet in the Hague Residentie-Orkest for seven years, before quitting for further composition study with Karl Amadeus Hartmann in Munich. Writing from a modernist perspective that takes in tonality and atonality equally, Ketting has created works in most genres of classical music, from symphonies to solo piano works, including a number of film scores. His opera Ithaka was composed for the official opening of the Amsterdam Muziektheater in 1986.

Yuri Sergeyevich Kasparov (born 1955) is a Russian composer, music teacher and a professor at the Moscow Conservatory where he had studied for his doctorate under Edison Denisov. Under the patronage of Denisov, he founded the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble in 1990 and is its Artistic Director.
He is the chairman of the Russian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music.
On this CD his music performed by the ensemble he has founded.

A pupil of Shostakovich, Kara Karayev had a highly expressive, individual style infused with the harmonies and melodic characteristics of the music of his native Azerbaijan. Karayev’s 1964 Third Symphony combines elements of traditional Azerbaijani music, such as the five-hundredyear- old ashug melody, with contemporary compositional techniques. Leyla and Mejnun, one of Karayev’s most popular works, was inspired by the great twelfth-century Azerbaijani poet, Nizami, while Don Quixote is based on musical material for a film score. This is the first time that these works have appeared on compact disc.