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Episode details

Radio 3,9 mins

Leokadiya Kashperova: Final movement of Symphony in D minor

Radio 3 in Concert

Available for over a year

The 麻豆社 Concert Orchestra and conductor Jane Glover perform live on International Women's Day 2018. Leokadiya Kashperova was a Russian pedagogue and pianist whose 20-year career also saw her compose all kinds of critically acclaimed music, including a symphony, a piano concerto, choral works, chamber music, piano solos and songs. Kashperova's career was interrupted when she married one of her piano students, a twice-arrested and exiled Bolshevik revolutionary. The couple was forced to flee to the Caucasus and then to Moscow, where she continued to compose in secret. However, she performed very few further recitals and despite her early success as a composer, her music was never published or performed again. Even in Russia, her role as a composer is almost completely unknown today: she is recognised primarily as Stravinsky鈥檚 piano teacher. Dr Graham Griffiths, who has been researching Kashperova's music on behalf of the 麻豆社/AHRC's Forgotten Women Composers project, laments the fact that until recently her reputation "rested uniquely, and unfortunately, upon Stravinsky鈥檚 barbed portrayal of his piano teacher as 鈥榓ntiquated鈥� and 鈥榓 blockhead鈥�". Dr Griffiths' research reveals Kashperova not only to have been a brilliant pianist, but a respected composer in her own right.

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