 At the age of 5 he started learning the piano and at the age of 14 he entered the Central Musical School attached to Moscow Conservatory ().He studied piano with Elena Petrovna Hoven (pupil of Alexander Borisovich Goldenweiser) and composition with professor Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin.From 1956 to 1961 he studied at the Moscow Conservatory initially with assistant professor Alexander Adrianovitch Yegorov (pupil of Konstantin Igumnov), then from 1959 at the class of professor Lev Nikolayevich Oborin.