Veronika Dudarova
Veronika Dudarova was a Soviet and Russian conductor, pianist, and music teacher. Born into an Ossetian family of the aristocratic Dudarov line, she received her first musical training at home and began playing melodies by ear on the piano at the age of three. At six, she entered the children's music school for gifted pupils at the Baku Conservatory. The Hungarian conductor Stefan Strasser, who visited Baku for symphonic seasons, encouraged her interest in conducting through music-theory classes for young musicians.
In 1933 she moved with her mother to Leningrad. From 1933 to 1937 she studied piano with Pavel Serebryakov at the music college attached to the Leningrad Conservatory, now the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg Music College. After moving to Moscow in 1937, she worked as a pianist and accompanist while studying with Boris Berlin in the preparatory department of the Moscow Conservatory. On Berlin's recommendation, she entered its conducting faculty in 1939 and studied there until 1947 with Leo Ginzburg and Nikolai Anosov.
Dudarova made her conducting debut at Moscow's Central Children's Theatre in 1944. She was assistant conductor at the Opera Studio of the Moscow Conservatory in 1945–1946, then became second conductor of the Moscow Regional Philharmonic Orchestra in 1947. In 1959–1960 she headed the orchestral-conducting department at the Institute of Culture and taught opera and symphonic conducting at the October Revolution Music College.
In 1960 Dudarova became chief conductor and artistic director of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, a post she held until 1989. She also worked at the Bolshoi Theatre that year on the operetta Spring Song and Khristofor Pliev's opera Kosta. Under her direction, the orchestra made its first foreign tour, to Poland, in 1972; in 1977 she prepared 50 new programmes for its repertoire. The ensemble also appeared at the Seventh International Festival of Contemporary Music in East Germany in 1979.
Her repertoire ranged from Baroque music to contemporary symphonic works. She made first recordings of works by Georgy Sviridov, Aram Khachaturian, Tikhon Khrennikov, Andrei Eshpai, Rodion Shchedrin, Mikael Tariverdiev, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Shamil Chalaev, Alexander Tchaikovsky, Zinaida Levina, David Krivitsky, Elena Firsova, Tatyana Chudova, and Alexander Golovin. She collaborated with performers including Vladimir Spivakov, Leonid Kogan, Valery Gergiev, Ivan Kozlovsky, Tamara Sinyavskaya, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Natalia Gutman, Eliso Virsaladze, Vladimir Krainev, Gidon Kremer, Mikhail Pletnev, Viktor Tretyakov, Andrei Gavrilov, Oleg Kagan, and Grigory Sokolov. Her conducting took her to Europe, Japan, Iran, Turkey, and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 1991 Dudarova founded the Symphony Orchestra of Russia and served as its chief conductor and artistic director. In early 2003 she appointed Pavel Sorokin as chief conductor while retaining the artistic directorship. She helped establish festivals named for Tchaikovsky in Izhevsk and Votkinsk, Mikhail Glinka in Smolensk, Sergei Rachmaninoff in Tambov, and Dmitri Shostakovich in Volgograd, and participated in festivals, concerts, and competitions in numerous Russian cities.
Dudarova was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1977 and received the Glinka State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1980 for her 1977–1979 concert programmes. She was entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the only woman to have led major symphony orchestras for more than 50 years. Her notable repertoire included Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony and First Piano Concerto, Bach's Mass in B minor, Verdi's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem, Ravel's Boléro, and works by Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Myaskovsky, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Gershwin, Sviridov, and Khrennikov. She also conducted music for several films, including The Forty-First, The Star Boy, The Idiot, The Art Object, and Move of the Knight.
She died in Moscow on 15 January 2009 and was buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery. An asteroid, 9737 Dudarova, was named in her honour, and the All-Russian Veronika Dudarova Conducting Competition was established in her name.