Soviet life During the
Soviet era, the Pavlova family was transferred to
Moscow in 1961. There Alla received her bachelor's degree in 1975 from the Ippolitov–Ivanov Music Institute, and in 1983 her master's degree from the
Gnessin State Musical College. She studied with
Armen Shakhbagyan, a composer with a reputation established in the 1970s, and paid special attention to the works of
Anna Akhmatova. This influenced a good part of her output until the 1990s. Following the achievement of her master's in 1983, Pavlova moved to the
Bulgarian capital of
Sofia, where she worked at the Union of Bulgarian Composers and the
Bulgarian National Opera. She returned to Moscow three years later. From 1986, Pavlova worked for the Russian Musical Society Board in Moscow, before relocating in 1990 to
New York City.
American life Lieder and chamber music Following her arrival in New York, Pavlova compiled a collection for her daughter Irene consisting of simple pieces for piano inspired by the fairy tales of
Hans Christian Andersen. During the first half of the 1990s her compositions alternated between
lieder and small works for
piano. In 1994, Pavlova produced her first major work, for a small chamber orchestra, Symphony no. 1
Farewell Russia. The symphony seeks to convey the melancholic burden and feelings of pain the composer felt on leaving her home country. The work is articulated in a single movement, and is scored for a small
ensemble consisting of two
violins, a
cello, a piano, a
flute, and a
piccolo,. It was recorded in Russia by soloists of the
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra two days after its first performance. Pavlova waited for four years to compose her next work for larger forces, an
Elegy (1998) for piano and string orchestra, barely four minutes long, motivated by the death of her teacher Shakhbagyan. Her first symphonic work following the Elegy was the
Symphony no. 2 "For the New Millennium" (1998), written that same year, her most ambitious work to date. Even before being revised four years later, it was brought to CD by
Vladimir Fedoseyev. Pavlova returned to the composition of lieder, composing pieces like
Miss me... but let me go at the beginning of September 2001. In the same way that
Cristóbal Halffter saw his composition
Adagio en forma de Rondó changed by the terrorist attacks of
September 11, Pavlova - who had been shocked by these attacks, and who lived quite close to
ground zero - decided to rededicate the song to the memory of the victims. Pavlova is a member of the
New York Women Composers, Inc. Specialization in the Grand Forms Besides supporting her prestige, the Second Symphony marks an important point in Pavlova's career, as she moved away from chamber music in successive works in favor of large orchestral compositions. In 2000, she sealed this change of orientation with the monumental Symphony no. 3 which was inspired by a New York monument to
Joan of Arc and is characterized by its intense expressive reach. Consistent with her habit of revising her works, Pavlova continued to work on this piece, adding a
guitar in a new version which was premiered in 2004. Her Symphony no. 4 was written in 2002, as well as a second concert work, a monologue with solo violin in which she again used a string orchestra. From 2003 to 2005 Pavlova worked on her first incidental music, for the
ballet Sulamith, to stage the 1908 story by
Aleksandr Kuprin inspired by the Biblical story of King Solomon. A symphonic suite of three quarters of an hour was extracted from this ballet. Pavlova has written several further symphonies (no. 11 appeared in 2021). Other works include the Thumbelina Ballet Suite (2008/2009), a Concertino for violin, piano and string orchestra (2012), and "Night Music" for violin and strings (2014). ==Works==