Vera Pogozheva, later Larionova (19 May 1833 – October 1858), was a Russian pianist, singer, music teacher, composer and musician. Together with her elder sister Natalia, she was highly popular in the musical circles of St. Petersburg and Moscow during the mid-19th century.
She was born in the rural settlement of Pereputye, Porkhov District, Pskov Governorate, the third daughter of Vasily Pogozhev, a major-engineer in the Department of Communications, and Evdokia Nekrasova. Her father’s work required the family to move repeatedly. From 1840 to 1846 they lived in St. Petersburg, where the family maintained a home theatre. Vera and Natalia showed early ability in drama and music: they recited poetry and dramatic scenes, remembered music easily, and could reproduce melodies after hearing them once.
On the advice of writers who knew the family, the sisters received musical instruction from M. Rosenthal, followed by F. Sieboldt and Carl Vollweiler. Sieboldt established the foundations of their playing method. By the ages of ten and nine, they were already performing with orchestral accompaniment. On 28 March 1844, they gave their first public concert, a benefit for the Second Vasileostrovsky Children’s Shelter. The performance was widely praised, and the press called the sisters a “musical miracle.”
In 1847 their father took them to the Leipzig Conservatory, financing the journey by mortgaging his estate and selling family possessions. Vera and Natalia studied with Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Ignaz Moscheles; they also took counterpoint lessons with Niels Gade, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Moritz Hauptmann, ensemble-playing lessons with Ferdinand David, and choral singing with Ferdinand Böhme. Vera missed many classes at first because she had to support herself through private teaching. The sisters performed for aristocratic audiences in Leipzig, including at a concert attended by the King of Saxony and later at the Saxe-Weimar court. They completed the conservatory’s two-year course in one year and three months, receiving diplomas after a public examination in 1848.
After returning to Russia, the sisters appeared successfully at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on 8 and 10 October 1848. They also performed for the Symphony Society and gave concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In 1850 they moved to Kostroma and performed in provincial cities including Vologda and Staraya Russa. In 1853 they planned to move to Moscow and open a piano class based on the Leipzig Conservatory’s approach, with group instruction in piano, music theory and music history, but the school was never established.
After Natalia’s death in 1856, Vera continued her sister’s teaching at the Catherine and Elizabeth Institutes in Moscow. She died in Moscow in October 1858. She had married staff captain A. A. Larionov.