Pianist Oliver Triendl and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anna Skryleva - Music Box, 9^th of March 2026

An album set to be released by Capriccio Records on the 20^th of March 2026: works by composer Leokadiya Kashperova, recorded by the German pianist Oliver Triendl and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anna Skryleva. More exactly, these are worldwide premiere recordings of Piano Concerto Op. 2 and Symphony Op. 4, the most representative works of this Russian composer.

But first of all, who was Leokadiya Kashperova? Among others, she was Igor Stravinsky's piano teacher. She was born in 1872, and passed away in 1940. She was herself a student of the famous pianist Anton Rubinstein and a graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. She worked as a piano teacher but she also had a career as a soloist, which took her on international tours, acclaimed by the critics of the time. She married in 1916, at the age of 44, a former student who was a year younger than her and a confidant of Lenin. The family was persecuted until the 1917 revolution, but afterward, her husband, Sergei Andropov, held several important political positions. However, Leokadiya Kashperova gradually withdrew from her professional life, adapting to the mores and spirit of the times.

In 1900, Leokadiya Kashperova composed her Piano Concerto Op. 2 - a work in the classical-romantic tradition, in which we recognize the melodies of traditional Russian music as well as undeniable compositional talent, with the score also highlighting the soloist's virtuosic technique. The concerto premiered in January 1901 in Moscow, with the composer herself as soloist. It is known for a fact that it was also performed in February 1901. After that, the score remained forgotten and it was rediscovered in 2016 - 115 years later - in the library of the Moscow Museum of Music.

It is impossible not to notice that this Concerto Op. 2, by Leokadiya Kashperova was composed at the same time when Rachmaninoff was writing his famous Piano Concerto No. 2, and there are definitely some similitudes in the Russian Romantic idiom that we find in both these musical scores.

I would also like to point out the excellent performance given by the pianist Oliver Triendl, who is a master in promoting little-known repertoires - a quality confirmed by the special award he received last year at the International Classical Music Awards gala. He was accompanied by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, in an impressive form, with the Russian conductor Anna Skryleva at the conductor's podium. In 2024, Skryleva received an Echo Klassik Award for the world premiere recording of the opera 'Grete Minde' by Eugene Engel, a composer who was born in 1875 and died in 1943 at the Sobibor extermination camp.

A disc on which we find not just one, but two world premiere recordings: it was unusual for a woman to compose a symphonic work at the beginning of the 20th century, as female composers of the time tended to tackle solo works or pieces for chamber ensembles. However, in 1905, Leokadiya Kashperova performed for the first time the score of her Symphony Op. 4, an ambitious work with a clear romantic spirit. We can feel the air of traditional Russian music, but we find no folk quotation as such - Kashperova takes a middle ground between the Russians who write in the Western European style and the Slavophiles.

It is also interesting to note the information found in this CD's booklet: that a copy of the orchestral score is dedicated to Aleksandr Glazunov - that too was preserved in the library of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, while the original score is dedicated to Max Neuscheller, who was a well-known industrialist of the time and a supporter of the arts. These are indications of Leokadiya Kashperova's significant position within the social and cultural environment of her time.