Jevgenija Lisicina

Jevgenia Lisicina (Russian: Евгения Лисицына, Latvian: Jevgēnija Ļisicina, born on November 11, 1942 in Stupino, Russia) is one of the most renowned Latvian organists of a Russian descent.

Biography

Jevgenija Lisicina was born in Stupino, near Moscow, in a family descended from Tula armourers, grew up in the Urals. Her father passionately wished a musician’s career for his daughter. She herself dreamed of the organ, which seemed to her a mystical instrument for the chosen ones. Having finished a music school in Sverdlovsk, she entered the piano faculty of the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatoire, class of Prof. Vladimir Nielsen. Once organist Mark Shakhin took the new student with him to a concert in Riga. There, Jevgenija heard the Riga Dome organ and got acquainted with the patriarch of Latvian organists – Nikolajs Vanadzins, her future professor. She left her piano studies and entered his class at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. Being a student, she gave more than 40 concerts, recorded a disc and got the Tchaikovsky’s scholarship.

Thus, Jevgenija Lisicina linked her life with the mighty building of the Riga Dome Cathedral and its major organ where she has been cherishing the dream of playing in the Riga Dome all Bach’s works composed for the organ in one musical project. She succeeded at last in making her dreams come true in 1999 – 2001. She devoted the project to the 315th anniversary of Bach and the 800th anniversary of Riga. By the way, she does not think she belongs to any school of organ music: “For me there exists just one school – that of Johann Sebastian Bach”.

The organist is a laureate of M. Ciurlionis’ International Competition of Organists (Lithuania, 1968).

In 2002 Jevgenija Lisicina mastered another musical project devoted to the 110th anniversary of her teacher Prof. N.Vanadzins. There were 9 concert programs in the project including masterpieces by Bach, Vivaldi, Reger, Franck, the works by French, Russian and Latvian composers and Bach’s Musikalisches Opferas well.

Works

Jevgenija Lisicina is the author of several transcriptions of classical music for organ performance. The most successfull transcriptions for organ are:

• Antonio Vivaldi - Gloria for choir and orchestra
• Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons for organ
• Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures from Exhibition for organ and piano
• Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures from Exhibition for organ and percussions
• Alfred Schnittke - Ancient Suite for organ
• Jāzeps Vītols - The Bard of Beverina for organ
• Francis Poulenc - Concerto en sol mineur for organ and piano
• Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings for organ
• Edvard Grieg - Introduction for “Peer Gynt” for organ and piano
• Maurice Ravel - Pavana for organ and piano

Another transcriptions include classical music of J.S.Bach and L.V.Beethoven.

Recordings

From early in career Jevgenija Lisicina has recorded dozens of organ music solo recordings in the Riga Dom Cathedral (Latvia). Today her recordings count twenty+ long-playing records and eight CDs.

In the 1989/90 questioning of the readers of the major Russian newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” revealed two records by Jevgenija Lisicina to be among top ten most popular classical music records in Russia.

See also

• Jevgenija Lisicina on Hermana Brauna Foundation web
• List of organists