Cellist and promoter of Russian music, known for his writing on the composer Alfred Schnittke
Alexander Ivashkin, who has died aged 65 of pancreatic cancer, promoted Russian music with energy and enthusiasm: performing it, writing about it, and encouraging others to do the same. He was active as an author, teacher, festival organiser, conductor – and an outstanding cellist.
His career as a recording artist started with a handful of recordings for the Melodiya label in Moscow, but really took off in the mid-1990s with a series of releases on Chandos. These included definitive recordings of the cello works of Alfred Schnittke, as well as complete surveys of the cello music of Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Sofia Gubaidulina. For Brilliant Classics he recorded Britten's music for solo cello with and without piano, and he premiered works by Gubaidulina, George Crumb, Krzysztof Penderecki, Arvo Pärt, Peter Sculthorpe and Roger Redgate.
However, Ivashkin's most distinctive contribution may come to lie in his writing on the music of Schnittke. The two men met in the early 1960s and quickly struck up a friendship. A book of conversations between them was published in 1994, and Ivashkin's 1996 biography was the first publication about him in English. After the composer's death in 1998, Ivashkin established the Alfred Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths College, University of London, edited several volumes of the composer's own writings, and instigated the Alfred Schnittke Collected Works series.
Ivashkin was born in Blagoveshchensk, eastern Siberia, on the border with China, where his botanist parents were then stationed. He showed precocious talent at both cello and piano, and entered the Gnessin School for Gifted Children in Moscow at the age of five.
Studies at the Gnessin Institute followed, and at the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included the conductors Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Valery Polyansky. On the advice of his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, he initially focused on performance, soon becoming co-principal cello in the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra.
In 1978, Ivashkin founded the Bolshoi Soloists, a chamber ensemble dedicated to new music. Radical works were regularly programmed, including those of the western avant garde, despite the disapproval of the authorities. In 1988, Ivashkin brought John Cage to Soviet Russia for the first time, and the composer worked with the ensemble on his Music for 14. Among his publications in the 1980s and 90s were books on Shostakovich, Penderecki and Ives.
By 1990, the Soviet Union was beginning to break up, and he accepted a chair at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. He and his wife, Natalia Pavlutskaya, whom he married in 1969, dedicated much of their time there to cello teaching, and in 1995 founded the Adam – later the New Zealand – International Cello festival and competition.
In 1999, Ivashkin was appointed professor of music at Goldsmiths, taking charge of performance studies and the Centre for Russian Music. The CRM flourished under his energetic leadership, attracting many research students (including myself), and staging concerts and conferences, often with the composers present. Ivashkin also arranged exchange programmes between British and Russian institutions, allowing students in both countries valuable research opportunities. This resulted in a formal co-operation agreement between Goldsmiths and the Moscow Conservatory.
Though a private man, Ivashkin, known widely as Sasha, was warm and friendly, attentive to others, or ready to share enthusiasm for a new musical discovery. In May last year in St Petersburg, he premiered Gabriel Prokofiev's Cello Concerto, playing it alongside the Concertino by Gabriel's grandfather, Sergei. The event was a huge success.
Natalia survives him.
• Alexander Vasilievich Ivashkin, cellist and scholar, born 17 August 1948; died 31 January 2014