Mikhail Gnesin and Elena Gnesina were brother and sister, children of Fabian Osipovich Gnesin. In 1909–1910 Elena repeatedly performed Mikhail's vocal works with Maria Deisha-Sionitskaya and other singers, and his Sonata-Ballade for cello and piano with Pablo Casals and Alexander Krein. In 1923 Mikhail moved to Moscow with his wife and son and settled in the house on Sobachya Square where his older sisters, including Elena, had lived since 1900 and where the music school they founded in 1895 was located.
From 1923 Mikhail also worked at the technical school founded by his sisters, heading its new creative department. In 1944, after Elena's active urging, he left his post at the Leningrad Conservatory and moved from Tashkent to Moscow to head the composition department at the newly founded State Musical-Pedagogical Institute named after the Gnesins. In 1948–1953, during political campaigns against formalism and cosmopolitanism, the closure of the composition department was averted only at the cost of Mikhail Gnesin's departure as its head, despite Elena Gnesina's appeals to higher authorities. Elena Gnesina was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow together with her sisters and her brother Mikhail.
