BIOGRAPHY

A Heritage of Culture and Creativity

Elena’s mother was Victoria Mathiessen–Gantchikova, the solo violoncellist, musicologist and journalist, a pupil of the famed Mstislav Rostropovich. Elena’s profound interests in music, painting , literature, poetry, aesthetics, history and philosophy were awakened in her by her mother Victoria. Elena’s mother was her first music teacher and later regularly shepherded Elena to her lessons, rehearsals and concerts, and also to various museums, theatres and picture galleries.  All this stimulated and developed Elena’s artistic taste and creativity.

Elena’s father, Valery Gantchikov, had a background in quantitative sciences and engineering; as well as in competitive sports. He obtained aPhD in Technical Science and held international positions in construction engineering. During his youth, Elena’s father was a track and field sport decathlete. Her father beneficially influenced Elena’s studies of chemistry, mathematics, and physics—extending to her passion for synthesized acoustics as an adult.

From the beginning, though, Elena was dominantly interested in music: "I always wanted to be a musician. My parents enjoyed music and in our house it was played and heard constantly there. My father was a fan of jazz and Brazilian samba, my mother acknowledged only classical music, and my nurse (while my family lived in Cuba for four years) played rhumbas and cha-chas, that I, a five year-old child, danced with her."(Interview in Russian Thought, from 8-14 December 2005.)

This domestic atmosphere, creative and multi-branched, helped Elena to first become a pianist, and then to study composition in parallel. Knowledge of both music and of technical disciplines allowed her to later master the newest technologies in the field of computer science as applied to music.

Constantly deepening and broadening her knowledge in different fields of music art, Elena Gantchikova decided not to be limited only on piano performance, but to practice, at the same time, composition in its entire variety as well as pedagogy.

Musical and Piano Instruction, Initial Professional Performances Composition
Moscow: Age Four to 1991

Elena’s music studies began at home, following the patterns and traditions of the Russian academic school. She studied to become a solo pianist; and “illustrated” the compositions she learned through the use of watercolour pastel, and plasticine sculpture models. Elena’s first instructor was Simeon Kruchin, the laureate of many international musical competitions. Before long; she began to master the virtuoso repertoire: the studies of Chopin and Liszt; the concertos of Rachmaninoff, of Chopin, and of Ravel; the seventh sonata of Prokofiev, the sonatas of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, and Liszt; and an enormous number of pieces by Russian and European composers. At the age of 10, Elena gave her first solo concert and she played in the Great hall of Moscow State Academy. During her instruction, Elena regularly undertook the master classes of Tatiana Nikolaeva.

From the age of 15, parallel to her studies, Elena began to perform on tour with her mother, who worked at that time as a soloist in the state concert agency “Soyuzkontsert". This agency organized performing tours in the territory of the Soviet Union. The family duet of Victoria and Elena Gantchikova travelled throughout the entire country with a large repertoire, which included the sonatas of Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Debussy, Brahms, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, etc.; and pieces by Russian and foreign composers. In 1988, Elena obtained the diploma of concert performer and piano instructor from the High School of the Moscow Highest State Concervatory Tchaikovsky.    With her diploma obtained, Elena was then immediately accepted in the state concert agency “Soyuzkontsert” for the posts of soloist and chamber music pianist. During this period of studies and performing tours, Elena began to be interested in composition. While touring the Caucasian republics ( Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), Elena and her mother gave the premiere performance of a sonata for cello and piano—which sonata had been composed by Elena.  Beginning from that time until the present, Elena has worked as a composer and has performed as a pianist.

In 1989, Elena entered the Tchaikovsky Highest State Conservatory of Moscowin the class of Professor Albert Lehman (Dean of the Faculty of Theory and Composition) and she began an intensive study of all 24 musical disciplines, whose acquisition is necessary for future composers. In 1990, after she had listened to the ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of Pierre Boulez  in the Great Hall of the State Conservatory, Elena made a pivotal decision to study new music technologies.

Modern Technology Knowledge and Skills Acquired and Applied While at IRCAM
Paris; 1991 to 1995

In 1991, Elena obtained a grant from the French government to continue her instruction at IRCAM (Paris) and, at the same time, at the Highest Conservatory (CNRS), in Paris, in Gérard Grisey’s class where she studied spectral music. Pierre Boulez, then the founder and director of IRCAM, and his successor Laurent Bayle, invited the best specialists from all over the world to work, to carry out research, and to develop new music technologies and computer programs. All programmers, inventors, scientists and composers working at IRCAM, instructed the students of the pedagogical department (Miller Puckette, Zack Settel, Cort Lippe, Andrew Gerzso, Philippe Depalle...). Each week, talented composers personally appeared before the students, to give seminars and analyse their (the composer’s) works, revealing and exchanging the secrets of their mastery. Pierre Boulez himself gave classes and regularly led the seminars. Thus, composers such as Tristan Murail, Brian Ferneyhough, Hugues Dufourt, Philippe Hurel, Marco Stroppa, Magnus Lindberg, Jonatan Harvey, Frédéric Durieux, George Benjamin, Ivan Fedele, Philippe Manoury, Marc-André Dalbavie... had a great influence on the formation of Elena Gantchikova’s musical mentality.

All these modern technologies piqued the imagination of this young Russian composer. The new technologies broke down and extended the (natural) limits of frequency and pitch of the traditional instruments. Furthermore, Elena discovered that by constantly listening for the finest characteristics of a sound’s physical nature, it is possible for a composer to develop her hearing sensitivity beyond that of a composer accustomed to hearing only naturally produced sounds.