Tatyana Kestner was a piano teacher at the Central Music School who devoted her entire life to the school. She studied with Alexander Goldenweiser and was one of the school’s first teachers, beginning in 1932.
Kestner taught a number of notable students, including Nikolai Petrov, Nikolai Lugansky, Vladimir Beluntsov, Elina Zaritskaya, Alexander Mogilevsky, and Evgeny Tsodokov, among others. The article presents her as an important and long-serving pedagogue whose name is closely connected with the history of the Central Music School.
Her student Nikolai Petrov recalled that he spent twelve years within the walls of the Central Music School and that, during those years, the students found true friends among many of the teachers. He wrote especially warmly about Kestner, describing her not simply as someone who taught him to play the piano, but as a teacher in the broadest sense of the word.
According to Petrov, from his very first days at the school Kestner followed every step of his life, knew about his family affairs, and paid special attention to his academic progress and behavior. However strictly she spoke to him, he remembered her as the closest and dearest of teachers.
Petrov added that even after he entered the conservatory, he always wanted to share every event of his student life first of all with Tatyana Kestner. He said he was very glad that the school he sincerely loved was closely linked with the name of Tatyana Kestner, whom he called a wonderful person who would always remain for him his dearest teacher and friend.