Olga Kalantarova, also known as Kalantarova-Ilyina, was a pianist and professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. She was born on 2 April 1877 in Tbilisi, then in the Russian Empire.
She studied at the Tbilisi School of Music, completing its piano class in 1895. When Kalantarova was fifteen, Anna Yesipova recognized her artistic potential and brought her to live in her home in Saint Petersburg so that she could continue her studies. Kalantarova graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1902 as Yesipova's pupil and, from 1903, remained there as Yesipova's adjunct.
As a performer, she appeared both as a soloist and in a trio with the violinist Leopold Auer and the cellist Alexander Verzhbilovich in concerts of the Saint Petersburg branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society from 1903 onward.
Kalantarova held a succession of teaching and administrative posts at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory: junior instructor from 1905, senior instructor from 1908, second-rank professor from 1912, and professor from 1926. She served on the piano department's presidium, became its deputy chair and then chair, represented the department on the faculty council, chaired a commission developing a new piano-teaching curriculum, and headed the piano department from 1932 to 1936. She also taught piano at the school and music college attached to the Leningrad State Conservatory and worked as a consultant at the Kirov District House of Culture.
In her teaching, she developed principles learned from Yesipova, demanding exceptional technical precision, vivid definition, variety of tone color, and expressive articulation in both classical and contemporary music. Her pupils included Mikhail Druskin, Tatiana Saltykova, Isaac Khantsin, Emanuel Elinson, Alexander Baron, Vladimir Slonim, Galina Gankina, and David Saliman-Vladimirov. In 1938 she was named an Honored Art Worker of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and in 1946 she received the Medal for Labor Valor.
Kalantarova died on 8 November 1952 in St. Petersburg. She was buried in the Necropolis of Masters of Arts at Tikhvin Cemetery, beside her husband, the pianist Yevgeny Ilyin, and near their friend and teacher Anna Yesipova.