Coryphaeus of the Kharkiv piano school. Nataliia Oleksandrivna Yeshchenko. A word about the teacher

Statement of the problem. The article is devoted to the creative personality of Nataliia Oleksandrivna Yeshchenko (1926–2015), an outstanding musician and well-known teacher, Honored Art Worker of Ukraine, Professor of the Special Piano Department at Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts. The performance and teaching activities of N. Yeshchenko are studied in the context of the birth and development of the Kharkiv piano school. Modern Ukrainian musicology has a number of publications devoted both to the development of Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts over many years of its glorious history, and to the personalities who formed its composition, performance and pedagogical schools. In the field of piano art and pedagogy, the study of the Kharkiv piano school is carried out through understanding the works of its outstanding representatives. For example, substantial monographs by L. Lysenko, O. Kononova, N. Iniutochkyna, N. Rudenko and a team of authors led by L. Shubina are dedicated to such outstanding pianists as P. Lutsenko, V. Lozova, R. Horowitz, N. Yeshchenko, T. Verkina. The purpose of the article is to draw attention to the creative figure of Nataliia Yeshchenko, one of the most prominent teachers of the special piano department at Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts, to reveal the features of her performance and teaching activities, her role in the birth and development of the Kharkiv piano school. The theoretical ground of the study is based on the works on piano pedagogy and performance practice, reference books, archival materials, studies of Kharkiv musical culture and historiography of Kharkiv I. P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts at that time. The scientific novelty of the work is argued in a multifaceted analysis of Yeshchenko’s performance achievements and pedagogical principles, which developed in the further professional activities of her numerous pupils and in the formation of her own Yeshchenko’s school, as well as in the scientific use of materials from her personal archive. The personality-oriented research method made it possible to single out and comprehend individual episodes of her creative biography; the comparative method helped clarify her individual performance style and pedagogical principles of professional musician training; the historical and cultural approach contributed to the study of N. Yeshchenko’s creative personality in the context of the founding and growth of the Kharkiv piano school in the 2nd half of the twentieth century and led to the conclusion that she played an outstanding role in the development of musical culture and professional piano education in Ukraine at that time.