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Donald Macleod follows Kashperova’s ascent to become a highly celebrated pianist and composer.

The name of Leokadiya Kashperova was, for many decades, recorded in mainstream musical history as a footnote: the piano teacher of Igor Stravinsky. Her full story as a musician and composer has finally now been unearthed, through the research of Dr Graham Griffiths, supported by Radio 3’s Forgotten Women Composers project in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the publisher Boosey and Hawkes. This week, in the year of her 150th anniversary, Donald Macleod is joined by Dr Graham Griffiths, author of Leokadiya Kashperova: Biography, Memoirs and Recollections of Anton Rubinstein, to rediscover this once renowned musician, and features many specially made recordings and UK premieres.

Kashperova was one of the most talented composers and pianists of her generation, described as ‘a most welcome phenomenon of St Petersburg’s musical life’. She studied composition with Nikolay Solovyov and piano with Anton Rubinstein. Both Glazunov and Balakirev favoured Kashperova in the interpretation of their music, and she travelled internationally as a soloist to destinations such as Berlin and London. She also often performed her own compositions. Prior to 1917 most of Kashperova’s works were published and heard, but the arrival of the Russian Revolution caused her voice to be silenced. Public performances of Kashperova’s music stopped altogether because of her connections with the gentry. Private performances were rare. She continued to compose, but now without any hope of hearing it played.

In today’s programme, Donald and Graham look at Kashperova’s student years. Anton Rubinstein predicted that Leokadiya Kashperova would eclipse all the men at the St Petersburg Conservatory, and yet it took her two attempts to persuade Rubinstein to take her on as a pupil. There were a number of musicians in Kashperova’s family when she was born in 1872, and as a young child it was already hard to pull her away from the piano. At 16, Kashperova was accepted into the St Petersburg Conservatory, where she studied piano with Rubinstein, one of the most celebrated pianists in the world. Students and professors would cram into Rubinstein’s room, and down the corridor, in order to hear him teach the piano to his handful of select students. Kashperova also began to compose music too, and the Conservatory’s professor of cello, Aleksandr Verzhbilovich, was very taken with her chamber music.

Symphony in B minor, Op 4 (excerpt)
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Jane Glover, conductor

Dich Einz’gen lieb’ ich (Songs of Love: 12 Romances, No 2) UK Premiere
Gebet (Songs of Love: 12 Romances, No 3) UK Premiere
Claire Booth, soprano
Alisdair Hogarth, piano

The Murmuring of the Rye (In the Midst of Nature)
The Threshing of the Wheat (In the Midst of Nature)
Mengjie Han, piano

Cello Sonata in E minor, Op 1 No 2 (Allegro appasionato)
Anastasia Kobekina, cello
Luka Okros, piano

Symphony in B minor, Op 4 (Andante – Allegro risoluto)
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Concert Orchestra
Jane Glover, conductor

Evening
Night
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Singers
Hilary Campbell, conductor

Produced by Luke Whitlock