Bashmet's strongest and most personal connections with composers are, unsurprisingly, with his Russian compatriots Alfred Schnittke (1934-1999), Sofia Gubaidulina (born 1931) and Giya Kancheli (born 1935). 

Schnittke wrote two works for Bashmet while the composer was still living in Russia, including the Viola Concerto which Bashmet premièred in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 1986 (still one of the pinnacles of the repertoire as far as Bashmet is concerned).  After Schnittke had left Russia, Bashmet was expecting a Viola Sonata from him.  Bashmet remembers that "it had not happened because he was very ill.  So I suggested that he compose a double concerto, for viola for cello or for viola and violin.  At the time he also had in mind a piece for Kremer and a piece for Rostropovich, so he wrote the Triple Concerto!"

Tatar-born Sofia Gubaidulina has a special significance for Bashmet, as he reveals in the liner notes to his latest CD. 

For me, Sofia Gubaidulina is one of the most important composers of the 20^th century.  She is very idiosyncratic.  She has a highly individual way of expressing what she wants to say.  And at the end of this journey are nothing more or less than the questions of human experience: birth and death, love and hatred, the beautiful and ugly, good and evil - as with Shakespeare, but in a different way.  In the process she uses a whole range of expressive devices, including specific orchestral effects, and draws on an infinite number of sources such as religious themes, the storehouse of more than 300 years of Tatar history and so on.

In similar ways, Tbilisi-born Georgian composer Giya Kancheli is moved by the traditions and community of his birthplace.  Again his music addresses great emotional and universal subjects.  For Bashmet Kancheli provides a leading role for the viola, especially in the work Styx where "the viola line contains within it the work's essential meaning and message".

Yuri Bashmet has recorded much of the repertoire composed for him by these Russian composers. Giya Kancheli's Styx and Sofia Gubaidulina's viola concerto are coupled on a disc issued by Deutsche Grammophon, performed with Valery Gergiev, the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and the St Petersburg Chamber Choir - nominated for a Grammy Award.