He champions contemporary composers and their works, having commissioned a number of modern works from André Previn, Leonardo Balada, Edgar Meyer, Rodion Shchedrin, Mariana Villanueva, and many more.
The young Shostakovich considered leaving Leningrad to study with him, and those who did become his students were eventually to include such composers as Aram Khachaturian, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Vissarion Shebalin, Rodion Shchedrin, German Galynin, Andrei Eshpai, Alexander Lokshin, Boris Tchaikovsky, and Evgeny Golubev, a teacher and prolific composer whose students included Alfred Schnittke.