Marina Frolova-Walker


Marina Frolova-Walker FBA is a Russian-born British musicologist and music historian, who specialises in German Romanticism, Russian and Soviet music, and nationalism in music. She is Professor of Music History and Director of Studies in Music at Clare College, Cambridge. In June 2019 it was announced that she would be the 36th Professor of Music at Gresham College. She has authored several books and a number of academic articles.

Biography

Born in Moscow, she first attended the college of the Moscow Conservatory and then subsequently completed her graduate studies at the conservatory proper. In 1994 she defended her doctorate on the symphonies of the 19th century German composer Robert Schumann and their influence on Russian music. She moved to the United Kingdom in the same year "for personal, rather than political reasons." Between 1994 and 2000 she taught at various schools in the UK, namely at the University of Ulster, Goldsmiths, University of London, and University of Southampton. In 2000 she started teaching at Cambridge.
In her biography, Frolova-Walker writes that she began teaching at 19, and adds that she has given more than 100 lectures before concerts in locations ranging from Carnegie Hall to factories in Kazakhstan.
In 2014, Frolova-Walker was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.
In 2015, Frolova-Walker was elected to professorship at the University of Cambridge. She delivered her inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cambridge in October 2015. Also in 2015 Frolova-Walker was awarded the Dent Medal for outstanding contribution to musicology.
Frolova-Walker has appeared regularly on TV and Radio including the BBC Proms. In 2015 she appeared on BBC Radio 3 Proms Extra speaking on Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. She has also contributed to the BBC Radio 3 Stravinsky 'A to Z',, , and BBC Radio 3 Record Review. In 2018-19, Frolova-Walker gave a series of lectures on at Gresham College; in 2019-20 her Gresham lectures will be on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Links to her radio broadcasts, filmed lectures, and selected articles can be found on .

Works

Frolova-Walker's interest in historiography of Russian music and the nationalist/exoticist myths resulted in the book titled Russian Music and Nationalism: from Glinka to Stalin, which is considered her magnum opus. It has received generally favourable reviews from critics. Andrew Wachtel, although pointing out several errors and shortcomings, wrote that it "will be important for all scholars interested in manifestations of Russian nationalist thinking and/or in the process of cultural nation-building."
In 2011-13 she held a Major Research Fellowship from the , which allowed her to pursue extensive archival research in , leading to the publication of Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics.
;Books
;Selected articles