Larisa Kanukova (full name Larisa Kharitonovna Kanukova; born 11 July 1951) is a Soviet and Russian composer and teacher. She was born in Ordzhonikidze, now Vladikavkaz, and has worked in symphonic, choral, vocal, chamber, programme, theatre and film music. She has served as deputy chair of the board of the Union of Composers of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania.
After graduating from the Ordzhonikidze Music College, Kanukova entered the composition faculty of the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied with Aram Khachaturian. She graduated with honours in 1975; her diploma work, the Festive Overture, was performed by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra under Veronika Dudarova in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. That year she joined the Union of Composers of the USSR. From 1982 to 1985 she undertook postgraduate study at the Moscow Conservatory with Professor Anatoly Leman.
Kanukova has written three symphonies, five cantatas, and numerous choral, vocal and instrumental cycles. Her large-scale works include the ballet Before the Court, based on a poem by Kosta Khetagurov, and the three-act opera The Apple of the Narts. Her symphonies were composed between 1978 and 1999, while the cantata cycle Memento, for mixed chorus and symphony orchestra on poems by Federico García Lorca, dates from 1977–1981.
Her orchestral and chamber catalogue includes a piano concerto, three string quartets, sonatas for violin and piano and for clarinet and piano, a woodwind quartet, and works for brass and mixed chamber ensembles. She has also composed music for piano, including a collection of children’s pieces and Morning in the Mountains.
Her vocal and choral music includes settings of poems by Kosta Khetagurov, Konstantin Balmont, Robert Burns, Omar Khayyam, Miguel de Cervantes, Alexander Pushkin and Rasul Gamzatov. Among her choral works are Iriston, a two-part poem for mixed chorus; Petrarch’s Sonnet; Three Sonnets by Michelangelo; a cycle of Shakespeare Sonnets for women’s chorus; and Christmas Impromptus.
Kanukova has served on the juries of many young composers’ competitions. Since 2004, she has been director and artistic director of the State Music School of Composition in Vladikavkaz, which she founded. She lives and works in Vladikavkaz.
She was named Honoured Artist of the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1986 and Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation in 1993. In 1990 she received first prize at the International Composers’ Competition in Bern, Switzerland.