Leokadiya Kashperova PIANO SEUL

SKU: HL.48025020

ISBN 9781784546250.

Leok adiya Kashperova (1872-1940), hitherto consigned to a footnote in musical history as Stravinsky's piano teacher, is undergoing rediscovery. A double graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, she emerged as a virtuoso pianist and composer in the romantic tradition. She was associated with some of the great musicians of her day, including Mily Alexayevich Balakirev and Leopold von Auer. She performed in both Germany and the UK in the 1900s, but her career petered out after 1920. These new editions of the Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 have been broadcast and recorded, whilst new editions of her Symphony and hitherto unpublished Piano Concerto have recently been issued. Kashperova's Romantic empathy with nature and childhood may be keenly observed in her chamber music and songs. The six-movement piano suite In the Midst of Nature (1910) in no exception in the way it uses evocations of nature to express nostalgia for her childhood in the peaceful and remote Russian countryside. In the Midst of Nature also resents an artfully graded progression, indicating that Kashperova probably shared this music with her many pupils: the early movements are within the range of the talented young player whilst the latter movements require the technique and interpretative maturity of a conservatoire student, the whole work being admirably suited to the professional recital.

SKU: HL.48025439

ISBN 9781784549077. UPC: 196288216384.

Leoka diya Kashperova (1872–1940), hitherto consigned to a footnote in musical history as Stravinsky's piano teacher, is undergoing rediscovery. A double graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, she emerged as a virtuoso pianist and composer in the romantic tradition. She was associated with some of the great musicians of her day, including Balakirev and Auer. She performed in both Germany and the UK in the 1900s, but her career petered out after 1920. The Piano Concerto (1900) is Kashperova's earliest surviving orchestral work, and it was premiered by the composer the following year in Moscow and St Petersburg, bringing her much wider recognition and paving the way for an international career. Cast in three movements and in a Romantic idiom, pianistic virtuosity is often channelled into the pianist's left hand, which is required to negotiate widely-spaced 'extreme' arpeggios – awkwardly angular when adagio, fiendishly technical when molto allegro. Kashperova's orchestral colours are achieved by felicitous solos for the woodwind, horns and brass. Noteworthy, too, are unexpected glimpses of chamber music when, in the last movement for example, the piano combines fleetingly with solo violin and solo cello in passages. The concerto's quick music (Molto allegro and Allegro con anima) admirably portrays the vivacious personality of their composer, described in 1906 as offering those around her 'an abundance of joy, excitement and fun'. The central movement, by contrast, is a tender Adagio which offers the listener a gem of musical poetry.

SKU: HL.48025132

UPC: 196288091417. 7.25x10.25 inches.

A setting of pastoral verses of Polonsky dating from the last two decades of the composer's life, after her withdrawal from musical life following the Russian Revolution. Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940), hitherto consigned to a footnote in musical history as Stravinsky's piano teacher, is undergoing rediscovery. A double graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, she emerged as a virtuoso pianist and composer in the romantic tradition. She was associated with some of the great musicians of her day, including Balakirev and Auer. She performed in both Germany and the UK in the 1900s, but her career petered out after 1920. The pencil manuscript of Evening & Night was discovered in the Russian National Museum of Music, Moscow. Although separate and self-contained it appears that the composer thought of the two songs as a pair. The work has been edited for performance by Graham Griffiths as part of the Kashperova Edition.

SKU: HL.48025116

ISBN 9781784547325. UPC: 196288074397. 9.0x12.0 inches.

Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940), hitherto consigned to a footnote in musical history as Stravinsky’s piano teacher, is undergoing rediscovery. A double graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, she emerged as a virtuoso pianist and composer in the romantic tradition. She was associated with some of the great musicians of her day, including Balakirev and Auer. She performed in both Germany and the UK in the 1900s, but her career petered out after 1920. The pencil manuscript of the Piano Trio in A minor (c1930-40) was discovered in 2019 in the Russian National Museum of Music, Moscow. The work has been edited for performance by Graham Griffiths in close collaboration with members of the Gould Piano Trio, who gave the world première in 2020. A four-movement work of 28 minutes' duration and in full-blooded Romantic idiom, it joins the recently republished Cello Sonatas 1 & 2 in the Kashperova Edition.