Aziz El-Shawan (b. Cairo, May 6, 1916; d. Cairo, May 14, 1993) was one of the most prominent Egyptian composers of the twentieth century. He completed his primary and secondary education at the St. Joseph – La Salle College in Khoronfish, Cairo where he also received a Higher Diploma in Commercial Studies. He studied the violin privately with the German Joseph von Aubervon, a student of Jan Kubelick, and joined the school's choir and band where he played the clarinet and French horn. His violin teacher obtained a scholarship for him to study at the Berlin Conservatory, however, his father objected to his interest in pursuing a musical career. An accident disabled one of the fingers of his left hand, obliging him to give up his dream of being a virtuoso violinist. He then studied piano, theory, harmony, composition and orchestration with the Italian Menato and the Russian Orlovitsky who were part of a community of European musicians and music teachers who lived and worked in cosmopolitan Cairo. El-Shawan held several administrative positions, most importantly at the Philips International Company where he founded a record production department. He was director of the Soviet Cultural Center in Cairo from 1952 up to 1967. This position enabled him to travel to Moscow in 1956 where some of his early works were performed by the Radio Moscow Orchestra conducted by Aram Khatchaturian and published on LP by the Melodiya state record company, including the Fantasia for Orchestra (1945), the Symphonic Poem ‘Atshan Ya Sabay (1946), and the overture of Opera ‘Antara (1947). He also came in contact with the music of several contemporary composers, most notably the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), the Armenian Aram Khatchturian (1903 – 1978) and the Azerbajianis Uzeyir Hadjibekov (1885 – 1948), Kara Karayev (1918 -1982) and Fikret Amirov (1922 – 1984). In addition to the influence of Rachmaninov and the Russian Five, El-Shawan saw the style of these west and central Asian composers as a model of a contemporary musical idiom inspired in traditional music. In Cairo, some of his early works were premiered in 1954 at the American University's Ewart Memorial Hall by a private orchestra that he hired and conducted as the state funded Cairo Symphny Orchestra had not yet been founded. Aram Khatchturian visited Cairo in 1960 and upon hearing El-Shawan's compositions invited him to study with him at the Moscow Conservatory, an invitation which