Anna Kantor was a Soviet and Russian piano teacher and music educator at the Gnessin School. She was born on May 27, 1923, in Saratov, in the Soviet Union, and died on July 28, 2021, in Prague. In 1992 she was named an Honored Artist of the Russian Federation.
She was born into a Jewish family. Her father, Pavel Kantor, was a physician, therapist, and administrative worker, a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and was executed during the Great Terror. Her mother, Fanya Kovner, also known as Faina Kantor, was a piano teacher at the Gnessin School.
Kantor studied at the Central Music School attached to the Moscow Conservatory with Tatyana Kestner and Tamara Bobovich. She later continued her education at the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied with Abram Shatskes.
From 1947 to 1958, she taught at the Gnessin Children's Music School. From 1955 to 1991, she taught at the Gnessin Moscow Secondary Special Music School. Between 1989 and 1991, she also taught at the Gnessin Music Pedagogical Institute.
Kantor played a particularly important role in the artistic biography of Yevgeny Kissin, for whom she remained the only teacher. Her other students included Nikolai Demidenko, Marina Chistova, Olga Kondratyuk, Elena Ivanova, Vladimir Bagrov, Anton Batagov, Ludmila Berlinskaya, Alexei Semyonov, Liza Smirnova, and Ekaterina Apekisheva.