I admit that I wanted to work with him, but my inner shyness prevented me from making a phone call to Robert, “We met through a Soviet writer Anatoly Aleksin. Tolya wrote a play called “My Brother Plays the Clarinet” and suggested that Robert and I work on it together. I wrote the music, Rozhdestvensky wrote the lyrics. It was our first time working together, but we immediately felt that we were comfortable together”. From that time until almost the last days of Robert’s life, they often created together. Rozhdestvensky liked to say: “You know, Oscar, you and I are like-minded. We even think alike…” “After working on the play, we have practically never parted and composed together.

Robert is an amazing name, he doesn”t need the patronymic. In the Far East they say — when you are in Moscow, contact Robert, he will help. And it was clear whom they meant.