91Èȱ¬

The 91Èȱ¬ 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’s piano teacher.

Dr Graham Griffiths, who has been researching Kashperova's music on behalf of the 91Èȱ¬/AHRC's Forgotten Women Composers project, laments the fact that until recently her reputation "rested uniquely, and unfortunately, upon Stravinsky’s barbed portrayal of his piano teacher as ‘antiquated’ and ‘a blockhead’". 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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