Elizabeth Kudryavtseva-Murina
Elizabeth Kudryavtseva-Murina was a Soviet and Russian choral conductor and music educator, and the first woman choral conductor in the USSR. She was born in St Petersburg in 1914 to choir regent Pyotr Kudryavtsev and Elizabeth Pauk. She entered the boarding school attached to the Court Singing Chapel in 1923 and was orphaned in 1929.
In 1931, she graduated from the choral technical school attached to the Leningrad State Academic Chapel, where she studied choral conducting with Mikhail Klimov. She later studied at the conducting and choral department of the Leningrad State Conservatory, graduating in 1947, and completed postgraduate studies in 1950 under Alexander Egorov. She also studied opera and symphonic conducting with Alexander Gauk and piano.
Kudryavtseva-Murina conducted at the Leningrad Academic Chapel from 1931 to 1961 and taught choral conducting at its choral school from 1931 to 1956. She served as acting chief conductor in 1935–36 and as chief conductor in 1941–44 and 1953–55. She prepared choral works for the chapel’s joint concerts with the Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Mravinsky. These performances included Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, premiered in 1940; Yuri Shaporin’s On the Field of Kulikovo, premiered in 1939; and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Song of the Forests, premiered in 1949.
From 1950, she taught choral conducting at the Leningrad State Conservatory, becoming an associate professor in 1952 and a professor in 1965. In 1958, she founded the Academic Choir of Amateur Singers of the Leningrad Choral Society and the conservatory’s university-wide choir. As artistic director of the amateur choir, she developed a repertoire of cantatas and oratorios, organ and choral music, and a cappella works by Russian and foreign composers. The choir received the honorary title of People's Collective, made recordings for All-Union and Leningrad radio, and appeared in television films.
She was named Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1954 and People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1977. Kudryavtseva-Murina died in St Petersburg on October 3, 2004.
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