A concert in memory of Tatiana Tchekina, who was assistant professor of accompanying at the Eastman School of Music, will be held at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, in Kilbourn Hall. Originally scheduled as the Eastman faculty recital of violinist Oleh Krysa, Professor Tchekina’s husband and duo-partner, the concert is free and open to the public.
The program will open with a performance by two student violinists who frequently performed in recital accompanied by Professor Tchekina. Second-year master’s degree student Markiyan Melnychenko and senior Da Sol Joeng will present Sergey Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins.
Several Eastman faculty members will also appear on the Kilbourn Hall stage to pay tribute to Professor Tchekina. Violinist Mikhail Kopelman, violist Carol Rodland, and cellists Steven Doane and Rosemary Elliott will perform Anton Arensky’s String Quartet with Two Cellos in A minor.
The program concludes with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, subtitled “In Memory of a Great Artist,” featuring Doane, Krysa, and pianist Barry Snyder.
Professor Tchekina, who had taught at Eastman since 2002, died in an automobile accident on Dec.7, 2013. Born on January 25, 1944, in Moscow, she studied at the Moscow and Kiev Conservatories. She and Krysa met as students at the Moscow Conservatory.
For more than four decades, Professor Tchekina performed in acclaimed solo and chamber music recitals with her husband in major concert halls across four continents, including the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in New York City, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She also appeared at major music festivals in Russia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Finland, the United States, and Australia, and regularly taught master classes in Japan. The couple also made more than 20 recordings together.
Before joining the Eastman faculty, Professor Tchekina taught accompanying at Gnesin Musical and Pedagogical Institute in Moscow and chamber music at the Kiev Conservatory. In 2004, she was an official accompanist at the David Oistrakh International Violin Competition in Odessa, Ukraine, and in 2008 at Qingdao International Violin Competition in China.
A memorial scholarship fund has been made in her name; contributions can be sent to the Tatiana Tchekina Scholarship Fund, Eastman School of Music Advancement Office, 26 Gibbs Street, Rochester NY 14604.
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