Elena Sorokina is a Russian pianist, music historian, professor, and educator. Born in Moscow on April 6, 1940, she studied piano and music theory at the Central Music School, graduating with a gold medal in 1958. She graduated from the Moscow Conservatory’s theory and composition faculty in 1963 and its piano faculty in 1964, then pursued postgraduate study in the history of Russian and Soviet music.
Sorokina taught at the Central Music School from 1959 to 1967 and joined the Moscow Conservatory in 1965. Over the following decades she taught the history of Russian music and the history of music of the peoples of the Soviet Union. She became a professor of Russian music history in 1991 and chaired that department from 1992 to 2011. From 2001 to 2008, she also served as vice-rector for research and creative work.
In 1968, Sorokina formed a piano duo with her husband, Alexander Bakhchiev. The duo was described as the “Golden Duo of Russia.” She helped establish the All-Union Piano Duo Association in 1989 and served as its first president jointly with Bakhchiev. Their recordings include piano duets by Bach and his family, Mozart, Dvořák, Schubert, and Rachmaninoff, as well as works by French and Central European composers.
Sorokina’s research focused on piano music and the history of the piano-duo genre. She defended a candidate dissertation on the development of the piano sonata in Russia in 1977 and a doctoral dissertation, “The Piano Duo: History of the Genre,” in 1990. Her publications include a book of that title, issued in 1988, and studies of Nikolai Peyko’s Second Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s piano sonatas. She was named an Honored Artist of the Russian Federation in 1992.