Central Music School: Yesterday and Today

In the August of 1932, on the initiative of both its director Stanislav Shatsky and Prof. Alexander Goldenweiser, Children Department was created in Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory in order to prepare talented pupils for entering the musical institution of higher education. Iraida Vasilyeva, a pianist who had studied with such leading figures of the Moscow piano school as Maria Nemenova-Lunz and Heinrich Neuhaus, was entrusted to head the department. In the same year, an autonomous Special Children Group was organized within that department: it consisted of brightly talented children and teenagers aged about fifteen, who had been specially selected.

The Special Children Group was run by Alexander Lushin, an expert in the field of upbringing who was organizing special and individual lessons of general education, as well as supervising children’s behavior: they lived with their parents or relatives because the Children Department had no dormitory then. The children of that group were trained by leading conservatory professors, such as the pianists Alexander Goldenweiser, Konstantin Igumnov, Heinrich Neuhaus and Abram Schatzkes, the violinists Konstantin Mostras, Abram Yampolsky and Leo Zeitlin, the cellists Semyon Kozolupov and Grigory Pekker, the music theorist Mikhail Rauchwerger and others. The children studied short courses of general education with teachers who were specially invited. The education in musical aesthetics was entrusted to Valentina Shatskaya, the wife of the conservatory’s director.

The lessons were taking place in the conservatory’s premises which had a permanent shortage of classrooms. Hard problems in the work of the Special Children Group were constantly revealed and discussed at meetings with both the conservatory administration and all tutors of the children on a regular basis. It was necessary to look for new ways of individual work with the pupils, particularly to find a good balance between their major and lessons of general education, for which there was a need to have a separate building. Therefore, in the May of 1935, according to a decree of the Soviet government, the Children Department was renamed into the Central Music School of Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, and the Special Children Group was entered into the school’s structure.

The school received a two-floor mansion near the conservatory. Prof. Neuhaus, who was the conservatory director then, issued several orders on the re-organization of musical education: Prof. Vasilyeva was appointed the director of Central Music School, Prof. Goldenweiser continued his artistic direction, and educational activities in the out-of-school hours were entrusted to Alexander Lushin. The first twenty teachers of Central Music School were mainly selected among those who had already worked at the Children Department of the Conservatory by then: Maria Andreyeva, Tamara Bobovich, Yelena Hoven, Tatiana Kestner, Valeria Merenblum and Vera Nadezhdina ought to be named.

From the very first days of the Central Music School’s independent history, the above-named professors continued teaching there, passing the traditions of Moscow Conservatory to the young pedagogues. Thus was created a unique school for musically talented children, where the only system of early professional training in the whole world was being perfected during many years. This has allowed to prepare numerous brilliant musicians, such as Vladimir Ashkenazi, Timofey Dokshitser, Andrei Gavrilov, Eduard Grach, Natalia Gutman, Oleg Kagan, Leonid Kogan, Andrei Korsakov, Vladimir Krainev, Alexei Lyubimov, Victoria Mullova, Yekaterina Novitskaya, Nikolai Petrov, Mikhail Pletnyov, Ivo Pogorelić, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Vladimir Spivakov, Viktor Tretyakov, Maxim Vengherov and others.

The Central Music School’s main goal was to bring up musicians who should become virtuosos of the higher class, combining their professional education with versatile intellectual, artistic and spiritual development in general. Therefore, some highly educated and talented pedagogues were invited to teach courses of general education at the school, such as Samuil Kamenkovich, Mikhail Loghinevsky, Gheorghi Paleolog, Dmitri Sukhoprudsky and others: they were trying to bring up not only educated musicians but also people of the highest ethical culture. The school graduates were receiving two diplomas: the leaving certificate and the one on the graduation of a secondary institution of music education.

The state authorities were taking a permanent interest in the activities of Central Music School by way of the full funding of this unique institution from the public budget. As a result of both the continuous state support and the professional custody by Moscow Conservatory, a grandiose breakthrough took place in the Russian art of musical performance. In 1937, Boris Goldstein, Marina Kozolupova and Rosa Tamarkina, the first graduates of Central Music School, became laureates of some important foreign competitions.

In the summer of 1941, when the USSR was attacked by Nazi Germany, the Central Music School was evacuated to Penza (a regional center 800 km to the south-east of Moscow). On the 27th of October 1943, the evacuated teachers and pupils returned to Moscow and joined their colleagues who were staying in the city, so that the school could continue its full-time activities. Despite the hardship of the war time, the school received a standard four-floor building that had been erected near the conservatory in order for the connection with its staff to be saved and strengthened.

The composer Vissarion Shebalin, who was the Moscow Conservatory director until 1948, assumed the artistic direction of the school then. During those years, the directorship of Central Music School was run by Prof. Vassily Shirinsky.

After the Second World War, the school prepared a new generation of young talents who won first prizes at international competitions and became worldly renowned. Among them should be named Lazar Berman, Nina Beylina, Igor Bezrodny, Bella Davidovich, Serghei Dorensky, Olga Erdeli, Margarita Fyodorova, Anton Ginsburg, Vera Gornostayeva, Eduard Grach, Mark Lubotsky, Yevgheny Malinin, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Tatiana Priymenko, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Yulian Sitkovetsky and others. During the later years, Vladimir Ashkenazi, Irina Bochkova, Tatyana Fedkina, Vladimir Felzman, Lyubov Timofeyeva, Oxana Yablonskaya and other brightest musicians reinforced the school’s international fame.

Another group of prominent teachers joined the Central Music School staff after the war. Among them were the pianists Anna Artobolevskaya, Alexander Bakulov, Leo Naumov, Lyudmila Roshchina, Anaida Sumbatian, Yevgheny Timakin and Boris Zemlyansky, the violinists Boris Belenky, Semyon Bezrodny, Volodar Bronin, Zinaida Ghilels, Natalia Sibor and Yuri Yankelevich, the cellists Stefan Kalyanov and Mstislav Rostropovich, the flutist Yuri Dolzhikov, the oboist Gennady Kerentsev and others.

In 1954, the department of music theory and composition was opened in the Central Music School (Prof. Shebalin had taught only elective lessons from 1949). Later some well-known composers, such as Nikolai Karetnikov, Roman Ledenyov, Alexandra Pakhmutova, Alexei Rybnikov, and some prominent musicologists, such as Eduard Alexeyev, Yelena Dolinskaya, Liana Ghenina, Galina Grigoryeva, Lyudmila Korabelnikova, Yelena Sorokina, Svetlana Vinogradova and others, were among the school graduates.

In the early sixties, the Central Music School dormitory entered an ancient mansion nearby, which allowed the talented children from all over the USSR to study at the famous school. This fact favored an unprecedented rise of the national culture of musical performance in the 1960–80s.

Having graduated from Moscow Conservatory in the late sixties, its best alumni came to teach at the Central Music School: among them are Marina Aslamazian, Yekaterina Bykanova, Igor Gavrysh, Tamara Koloss, Nina Makarova, Alexander Mndoyants, Marina Ozerova, Varvara Pavlinova, Alexander Revich, Anatoly Ryabov, Yelena Sorokina, Tatiana Stoklitskaya and many others. Thanks to this, both the traditions and the succession of the system for the training and upbringing of specially gifted children, which were laid by the constellation of the great Central Music School teachers of the former decades, have still preserved. At the same time, the teaching staff of the school was replenished by some prominent pedagogues invited from other cities of Russia and from abroad: among them are Prof. Galina Turchaninova (Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation), Prof. Kira Shashkina (Honored Art Worker of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan) and Prof. Yova Yordanova (Honored Artist of Bulgaria).

By the end of the seventies, the Central Music School building became deteriorating. The director Anatoly Bykanov undertook some serious administrative efforts in order to strengthen the falling ceilings. In 1979, the school moved into a neighboring house for the time of the capital repair that was managed to be finished quite fast, and then it functioned in its home building for another eight years. However, the construction expertise eventually recognized an emergency condition of the building, therefore in the autumn of 1988, both the school and the dormitory were removed into a standard building uptown of Moscow, which was absolutely unequipped for the musical training. The dormitory jostled on the second floor of the same building, so that not only were the children void of their rehearsal rooms but also of any elementary conditions for their individual training and rest at all.

The so-called ‘quick’ reconstruction of the old building promised by the government took as long as eighteen years that coincided with the chaotic period of the Soviet ‘perestroyka’. Mr. Valentin Belchenko, a new director, assumed upon himself the hardest efforts of fighting for the rebirth of the Central Music School in its old place.

The school was parted from the conservatory during all those years, and many teachers (mainly of general courses) left. However, despite its remote location uptown, many professors continued training their young pupils. It resulted in the amazing fact that the Central Music School managed to preserve its both high professional level and main teaching staff even through those very difficult years. The school graduates continued winning prizes in national and foreign contests: among them are Alyona Bayeva, Valeria Bessedina, Stanislav Bunin, Yevgheny Bushkov, Anastasia Chebotaryova, Alexander Ghindin, Ilya Kahler, Pavel Karmanov, Valery Kuleshov, Leonid Lebedev, Nikolai Lugansky, Anna Malikova, Yuri Martynov, Denis Matsuyev, Yekaterina Mechetina, Alexander Melnikov, Alexander Moghilevsky, Pavel Nersesyan, Yevgheny Petrov, Vadim Rudenko, Maxim Rysanov, Nikolai Sachenko, Alexei Sultanov, Serghei Tarasov, Tatiana Vassilyeva, Natalia Zagorinskaya and many others.

As a result of intensive efforts of the new Central Music School administration headed by Dr. Alexander Yakupov, as well as owing to the important financial aid of both the Russian Government and the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, the reconstruction of the school building was finally completed in 2004. In the January of 2005, the Central Music School returned on its former place near the conservatory: the house was excellently rebuilt, nicely featured and newly equipped. In the spring of the same year, the dormitory returned into its ancient but repaired mansion as well. Thus the reunion of the Central Music School with Moscow Conservatory, which was waited for so long, was finished.

Today the Central Music School has three concert halls enjoying the fine acoustics: two of them are in the educational building, and the third one is in the dormitory. There are excellent new Steinway & Son grand pianos on all concert stages and in most of the classrooms; an organ was installed in 2007. There also are a functional music library, a rich audio collection, classrooms with modern sound-proofing, and an affordable dining-room with a nice cafeteria.

The Central Music School has created all necessary conditions for the fruitful studying, upbringing, versatile intellectual and artistic development of specially gifted children who are able to reach their high creative results and later to enter almost any higher institutions of music education both in Russia and abroad.

Translated by Dmitri Gorbatov