Evgenia Savina-Gnesina
Evgenia Fabianovna Savina-Gnesina (11 March 1870 – 6 April 1940) was a Russian pianist, music teacher, and musical public figure. She was one of the Gnesin sisters and became a co-founder and leading figure of the Gnesin musical educational institutions. Although documents give differing years of birth, ranging from 1866 to 1871, 1869 or 1870 is considered the most likely.
Born in Rostov-on-Don, she came from a musically inclined family. Her mother was an amateur singer and pupil of Stanisław Moniuszko, while her maternal grandfather was a klezmer violinist in Vilnius. Savina-Gnesina attended the Catherine Gymnasium in Rostov-on-Don, then moved to Moscow in 1883. She studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory with Eduard Langer in the junior division and Vasily Safonov in the senior division, completing the conservatory’s teaching course in 1889 with a small silver medal. She also studied theory with Sergei Taneyev, Anton Arensky, and Nikolai Kashkin. Her student motet “Magnificat” was performed by the conservatory choir at a public concert in 1888.
In 1895, following Kashkin’s advice, she founded the E. and M. Gnesin Music School with her sisters Elena and Maria. She taught at the institution for the rest of her life and, together with Elena, led its development; Savina-Gnesina held unquestioned artistic authority, while Elena assumed administrative leadership. A leading piano teacher, she officially headed the piano department of the Gnesin Technical School from 1920 to 1938, and also taught elementary music theory and children’s solfeggio. From 1922 to 1924 she taught elementary music theory at the Moscow Conservatory while continuing her work at the Gnesin institutions.
In 1903 Savina-Gnesina established a children’s choir at the school, probably the first such choir in a Moscow music educational institution, and directed it until 1936 or 1937. The ensemble became highly popular and premiered works written for it by Reinhold Glière and Alexander Grechaninov. Glière dedicated his Suite for Two-Part Women’s Choir, Op. 13, and his 24 Characteristic Piano Pieces for Youth, Op. 34, to her. In 1911 she mounted Grechaninov’s children’s opera The Christmas Tree’s Dream, an innovative undertaking, and subsequently directed further opera productions involving child and adult students, including works by Grechaninov, Fabius Vitáček, Yuliya Weisberg, Léo Delibes, and Mozart.
Her pupils included the pianist Nikolai Orlov, who entered the Moscow Conservatory at the age of twelve, as well as pianists, composers, teachers, scholars, and accompanists associated with the Gnesin institutions. Savina-Gnesina particularly valued the teaching of transposition, including sight transposition, and gave lectures on the subject to young teachers. She was named Honored Artist of the Republic in 1925 and Honored Art Worker of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1935. Despite serious illness from 1936, she continued working until her death and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.