Tatiana Petrovna Nikolayeva (Russian: Татьяна Петровна Николаева|Tatyana Petrovna Nikolaeva; May 4, 1924November 22, 1993) was a pianist, composer, and teacher from the Soviet Union.
Nikolayeva was born in Bezhitsa,[1] in the Bryansk district, on May 4, 1924. Her mother was a professional pianist and studied at the Moscow Conservatory under the renowned pedagogue Alexander Goldenweiser, and her father was an amateur violinist and cellist.[2] Nikolayeva won first prize in the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, which was founded to mark the bicentenary of Bach's death in 1750. Dmitri Shostakovich, who was a member of the jury, composed and dedicated the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, to her: it remained an important part of her piano repertoire.
She sat as a jury member on international competitions such as the Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition,[3] the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Leeds Piano Competition.[2] She recorded her own transcription of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.[4] Nikolayeva was the teacher of Nikolai Lugansky.[5] Among her other students were András Schiff, whom she taught in summer courses at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar,[6] and Michael Korstick, whom she taught during her master classes at Musikhochschule Cologne, Germany.
She died on November 22, 1993, in San Francisco, nine days after succumbing to a brain haemorrhage during a performance of one of the Op. 87 fugues at the Herbst Theatre.[2] [7]
As James Campbell-Methuen commented in her obituary, "Aside from the Shostakovich, though, Tatiana Nikolayeva will be remembered as a Bach player who flung stylistic considerations to the winds and played the music with an irrepressible musical intelligence and knowledge of the resources of her chosen instrument."[2]