Leokadiya Kashperova

Kashperova was born on 4 May 1872 according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, 16 May in the Gregorian calendar, in Lyubim, near Yaroslavl. She studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, graduating twice: first in 1893 from Anton Rubinstein’s elite piano class, where she was regarded as exceptionally gifted and won the prestigious Schröder Piano Competition; and again in 1895 in composition as a pupil of Nikolai Solovyov.

For the next two decades, Kashperova was a respected figure in
St Petersburg’s musical life. She gave piano recitals, appeared in chamber-music series, hosted regular musical evenings in her apartment and, in 1907, undertook concert tours to Berlin and twice to London. Contemporary accounts leave the impression of an artist whose gifts were equally persuasive at the keyboard and on the manuscript page: a pianist of authority and rare tonal sensitivity, and a composer whose music was valued for its melodic vitality, refinement and emotional immediacy.

Her catalogue extended well beyond chamber music and included a symphony, a piano concerto, piano trios, choral works, songs and music for solo piano. By the time of the Revolution, many of her most ambitious compositions had either been performed in public or appeared in print.
Alongside her performing and compositional work, Kashperova became an influential teacher. Her best-known pupil was Igor Stravinsky, whom she taught from 1899. In his autobiography and later recollections, Stravinsky remembered her with gratitude not only for giving him an excellent piano technique, but also for imparting a sense of métier: the discipline and practical craft of the professional musician. In this respect, Kashperova was his first mentor in the double vocation of composer and pianist.

In 1916, Kashperova married her pupil Sergei Andropov, a Bolshevik revolutionary. The political upheavals that followed interrupted her professional ascent, and the couple left Petrograd for the Caucasus. After arriving in Moscow in 1920, she was occasionally invited to perform music by composers with whom she had been associated in St Petersburg, but her own works were no longer in demand. Surviving manuscripts from her later years show, however, that she continued to compose.
Revolution, civil war and the shifting demands of Soviet cultural life gradually pushed Kashperova to the margins of Russian musical history. After her death in Moscow on 3 December 1940, she was almost completely forgotten. The recovery, publication and performance of her surviving works have now begun to restore her place in musical history, revealing a composer-pianist of striking individuality, technical assurance and emotional range.