Russia
Special Music School of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory Saint Petersburg
The Special Music School of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory Saint Petersburg was founded in 1936, after the pianist Samari Savshinski had set up an experimental group at the Conservatory for gifted young people between the ages of six and fifteen two years earlier. Savshinski’s pupils included Laser Bermann, Daniel Schafran and Boris Gutnikov. Right from the start the Special Music School was a boarding school that enabled gifted children from provincial cities all over Russia to come to Saint Petersburg to study. The number of talented pupils and the very high standard of teaching immediately yielded outstanding results. During the Second World War the school was evacuated to Tashkent where its work continued.
From its very first graduates in 1938 right up to the present day the school has trained a large number of top musicians including the pianists Anatol Ugorski and Grigory Sokolov, the cellists Boris Pergamenschikow and Mischa Maisky, the violinists Michail Weimann and Vladimir Spivakov and the conductors Jurij Termikanov and Mariss Jansons. All of these world-class musicians have repeatedly emphasised that it was the school that made them into the musicians they are today and that laid the foundations for their musicianship. From the very beginning the school has given many concerts in Saint Petersburg and other Russian cities. The school’s soloists and symphony orchestra are regularly represented in international presentations of Russian culture abroad.