Moscow, Muscovites, and the Moscow Conservatory During the Great Patriotic War. Based on the Letters of Olga E. Levasheva

For the first time, fragments of letters by the musicologist Olga E. Levasheva (1912–2000), written during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1943), are being published. All the letters were addressed to the musicologist Tamara N. Livanova, who was expected to serve as Levasheva’s academic supervisor for her graduation thesis. Beyond discussions of strictly professional matters, the correspondence brings to life figures from the teaching staff of the Moscow Conservatory (Konstantin A. Kuznetsov, Daniel V. Zhitomirsky, Roman I. Gruber, Yuri V. Keldysh, Igor V. Sposobin, and others) as well as Levasheva’s fellow students (Tamara V. Oboladze, Kira S. Alemasova, Natalia V. Zaporozhets). Especially notable are her interactions with the pianist Svyatoslav T. Richter, who initiated an outdoor picnic, inspired by Claude Monet’s painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Picnic on the Grass)

Musicology · Painting · Performance art · Picnic · Emergency Medicine Education and Research · Social and Behavioral Studies · Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies