Liudmila Kovnatskaya

Liudmila Kovnatskaya
Born Liudmila Girshevna Kovnatskaya
(1941-02-05)5 February 1941
Leningrad, Russian SFSR, USSR (present-day Saint Petersburg, Russia)
Fields Music history, musicology
Institutions Professor at the St Petersburg State Conservatoire named after N. Rimsky-Korsakov; Chief Researcher at the Russian Institute оf Fine Arts History in St Petersburg; Head of the regional department of the International Musicological Society (IMS)
Known for Monograph on Britten
Notable awards The Scholar of the Year (1993, Cambridge Biographical Center); A. Belyaev Literary award (2001) for the book "Arnold Schoenberg. Correspondence" (St Petersburg, 2001); Honoured Art Worker of Russian Federation

Liudmila Grigorievna Kovnatskaya (born 5 February 1941) is a Russian musicologist. She is a professor at the St Petersburg State Conservatoire named after N. Rimsky-Korsakov (1987), and the Chief Researcher at the Russian Institute оf Fine Arts History in St Petersburg. She is considered an Honoured Art Worker of Russian Federation.

Education

She graduated in 1965 from two departments at the Leningrad State Conservatoire named after N. Rimsky-Korsakov: the department of History of Music and Piano Performing Faculty, and the department of Organ Playing, having studied under Prof Isai Braudo. It was at the Conservatoire that she finished a postgraduate course in the department of History of Western Music, under the supervision of Prof Dr Mikhail Druskin. In 1970 Liudmila Kovnatskaya presented a candidate dissertation on Benjamin Britten’s oeuvre. In 1987 she completed a doctoral dissertation on English music of 20th century, at the Moscow research institute of Arts of Academy of Science, USSR.

Professional experience

Since 1987 Prof Kovnatskaya is a member of Russian Composers’ Union, and she was a member of the General Council for Cultural Affairs of St Petersburg from 1987 until 1993. In 2002 she became a member of the Council (Directorium) of the IMS. In the same year, she became a member of the editorial board of the journal “Tempo” (Cambridge).

In 2001 Prof Kovnatskaya became a materials consultant on Russian music for "The Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians" (London: McMillan, 2001). She was also a guest lecturer at the University of Manchester (1991), the Aldeburgh Festival (UK), and the Ural Conservatoire in Yekaterinburg.

Liudmila Kovnatskaya is the author of a monograph about Benjamin Britten (Moscow, 1974), in the book “English Music in the 20th Century: Sources and periods of development” (Moscow, 1986). Thanks to her research and organization activity in Russia, various festivals and concerts were organized, which were dedicated to English classic music, including Britten. Among them were “Ars Britannica” (1988–1990), the festival in honour of “The 80th anniversary of B. Britten” (1993), “The World of Ralph Vaughan Williams” (1996), the festival of Britten’s music on his 85th anniversary (1998), the jubilee concert in honour of Britten and Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians (2003), the concert “World of Opera: Benjamin Britten”, and others.

Prof Kovnatskaya’s research fields include History of Russian Music; she has written, edited and compiled books and articles on D. Shostakovich. Among her non-published manuscripts one can find a monumental work entitled “Ideological control of Musical avant-garde of 1920s: Leningrad Association of Contemporary Music in reports and other materials” (Soros Foundation Funding).

Shostakovich, Schoenberg, Britten, Purcell, Tippet, Arensky, Balakirev, English music, Russian-English connections, M. S. Druskin, A. Schweitzer and the Soviet musical epoch – all these subjects were established by Prof Kovnatskaya due to her intensive and rigorous nature as a researcher, editor and author of books, proceedings, collections and many-volume editions.

A separate field of her research and publishing activity is the ‘offering to the Teacher’, who was a famous musicologist and Professor of Leningrad Conservatoire Mikhail Druskin. In 2009, thanks to Prof Kovnatskaya, a two-volume collection was published, entitled “Memory to Mikhail Semenovich Druskin”, which united articles, recollections, biographical materials and correspondence. All who knew M. Druskin as a musician, musicologist and teacher took part in the creation of this 1000 page book. Furthermore, in addition to this, Liudmila Kovnatskaya led the task of re-publishing works by Druskin and, as a result, realized an extensive project: a 7-volume Collected Works. At present, the first volume, “Clavir music”, and the fourth volume, “Igor Stravinsky”, are published.

Books

Books and collections (editor, co-editor)

Articles in collection and monographs

Selected articles, reviews in periodicals

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