Tat'yana Nikolayeva

Tat'yana Petrovna Nikolayeva (Bezhitsa, 1924 – San Francisco, 1993) was a Russian pianist, pedagogue and composer whose career unfolded almost entirely within the Soviet Union, until her piano playing attracted attention in Western Europe. Her mother, a professional pianist, introduced her to music, and at the age of thirteen she began studying with Godenweiser. She continued at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1947, and then studied composition with Golubev, in 1950. That same year she won first prize at the Bach Competition in Leipzig, and Shostakovich, a member of the jury, was so impressed that he followed her career closely; later he composed his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, with her in mind, a cycle she recorded on three occasions. From 1959 she taught at the Moscow Conservatory and, from 1965, held a professorship there.

For decades she performed throughout the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, but it was not until the 1980s that her name became known in Western Europe, where her Bach was particularly admired for its intelligence and its ingenious use of tonal variety. Her repertoire included complete cycles of The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Art of Fugue, as well as the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. As a composer she wrote two piano concertos, 24 concert studies, a piano sonata and a piano quintet, as well as symphonic music, all written in a firmly polyphonic style, a trait that also defined her interpretation.