Veronica Dudarova is an outstanding symphony conductor of our time. She is registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the only woman in the world to have headed large philharmonic orchestras for over half a century. Dudarova is closely related to formation and development of symphonic festival traditions in the cities of Russia. Veronica Borisovna has recently celebrated her 90th jubilee with a grand concert.

Veronica Borisovna Dudarova was born on December 5, 1916, in Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan) into an Ossetin family. Veronica was a very talented child. She got her primary music education at the gifted children’s music school attached to Baku Conservatoire. In 1933-37 she studied at fortepiano department of Music College under Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Conservatoire. From 1939 to 1947 Dudarova was a student at the symphonic conductorship faculty of Moscow Conservatoire.

In 1944 Veronica Dudarova worked as a conductor at the Central Theatre for Children in Moscow, and in 1945-46 she was an assisting conductor of the Opera Studio attached to the Moscow Conservatoire.

From 1947 Dudarova was a conductor of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, and from 1960 to 1989 she was holding the position of its principal conductor.

Since 1991 she has been the founder, art director and principal director of the State Symphony Orchestra under the conductorship of Veronica Dudarova.

Dudarova’s performing art is highly optimistic and life-asserting, with elevated romantic spirit and the atmosphere of confiding mutual understanding with the public at concerts. The conductor’s interpretations excel in freshness of concepts, ardour of sensations, and convincing dramaturgic solutions.

Dudarova’s activity, based on high ideals of Russian democratic culture, makes up a whole epoch in the national music performing art. Her creative longevity goes side by side with excellent artistic shape and her young soul; the breadth of interests is combined with intense self-development and purposefulness.

In the 1940s-60s Veronica shaped into a prominent enlightener and a musician of open and sincere art. In the 1970s-80s the conductor was an apologist of romantic and impulsive performing. The 1990s-2000s are remarkable for the appearance of growing classical tendencies, philosophic profundity, and concise simplicity and clarity in her art.

Being a wonderful interpreter of modern music Veronica Dudarova is keen on promoting compositions by Russian authors. She has most fruitfully collaborated with such composers as Georgi Sviridov, Aram Khachaturyan, Tikhon Khrennikov, Andrei Eshpaj, Alfred Shnitke, Sofiya Gubajdulina, and others.

Dudarova is good at ensemble work. Her concerts have presented renowned soloists and world-famed music stars, including Oleg Kagan, Leonid Kogan, Ivan Kozlovsky, Vladimir Viardo, Natalia Gutman, Liana Isakadze, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Spivakov, etc. She has brought up hundreds of first-rate orchestral musicians.

The conductor has recorded music for 50 films, the most prominent of them being Sorok pervyy (The Forty First) (1956), Idiot (The Idiot ) (1958), Shestoye iyulya (The Sixth of July) (1968), Dnevnye zvyozdy (Day Stars) (1966), Nakhalenok (1961), and Zhuravushka (A Little Crane) (1968). Dudarova’s recordings of Russian and foreign music classics make a part of the golden fund of the national radio and television and have been recognized among the best music products on the world market.

Veronica Dudarova is a possessor of numerous awards and titles. In 1999 one of planetoids of the Solar system was named after her.

Veronika Dudarova died, aged 91, on 16th January in Moscow.

Sources:
     biograph.ru
    pda.lenta.ru

Photos:
    mk.ru
    biograph.comstar.ru
    kommersant.ru
    llr.ru