Google Doodle today celebrates the 101th birthday of famous Baku woman Veronika Dudarova.
Dudarova was a Soviet and later Russian conductor, the first woman to succeed as conductor of symphony orchestras in the 20th century.
Dudarova was born in Baku in 1916. She attended the school of music in Baku, the piano department of the Leningrad Conservatory (1933–1937), and the conductors' department of the Moscow Conservatory (1939–1947).
For thirteen years, from 1947 until 1960, Dudarova was a junior conductor at the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra; in 1960 she took over as the principal conductor and led the orchestra until 1989. She led the Symphony Orchestra of Russia from 1991 to 2003, and retained the role of artistic manager of the orchestra until her death in Moscow in January 2009.
