Igor Pikayzen
Igor Pikayzen
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Violin,
String Studio Class Director
Twenty-five-year-old Russian-American violinist Igor Pikayzen is quickly building a reputation as one of the most promising young artists of his generation. Winner of the most recent edition of the Tadeusz Wroński International Violin Competition, Pikayzen enjoys a multifaceted international career as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Praised by critics and audiences alike on four continents for his rare musical maturity and astounding technical ability, Igor Pikayzen is "surely at the forefront of an incredible musical career" (Moscow Times).
Since his concerto debut at age eight, with Mozart's Violin Concerto No.2 and the Ankara Philharmonic, Pikayzen has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras, spanning Europe, Asia, and North and South America, including the Moscow Philharmonic, Moscow Radio Symphony, Bucharest Philharmonic, Istanbul Philharmonic, Taiwan Chamber Orchestra, Eastern Festival Symphony Orchestra, Filharmonia di Bacau, Czestochowa Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, Bialystok Philharmonic, Milano Chamber Orchestra, Ridgefield Symphony, Kielce Philharmonic and many others. He has appeared in the most illustrious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, President's Hall in Ankara, Taipei Concert Hall in Taiwan, Chopin Academy Hall in Warsaw, Morse Recital Hall in New Haven, Minor Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, and Flagey in Brussels as well as Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fischer Hall at Lincoln Center. Pikayzen has also performed on live radio broadcasts for Radio Kultura, RTBF and WQXR.
In addition to a long-standing violin-piano duo with his mother, Chopin Competition prize-winner Tatyana Pikayzen, Pikayzen is a keen lover of chamber music and has been blessed with an array of wonderful chamber music partners and mentors. He has worked or collaborated with such artists as Seymour Lipkin, Joseph Kalichstein, Viktor Pikayzen, Tibor Varga, Sylvia Rosenberg, Ani Kavafian, Boris Berman, Claude Frank, Peter Wiley, Boris Kuschnir and Zakhar Bron as well as the Tokyo and Kuss Quartets. Pikayzen has also appeared in many chamber music series, such as Moscow's Winter Lights Festival and New York's Bargemusic.
Besides his triumph at the Wroński Competition, Pikayzen has amassed a slew of honors, including first prizes at the Greenwich Symphony Competition, Ridgefield Symphony Competition, Bacardi Instrumental Competition, and Manhattan School of Music Competition as well as numerous prizes at the Kloster-Schontal International Violin Competition in Germany, the Lipizer International Violin Competition in Italy and the Jeunesses Musicales Competition in Romania. Throughout his studies, Pikayzen has been a recipient of the Dorothy Delay Scholarship and the Fritz Kreisler Scholarship from the Juilliard School, a Career Grant from the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation and the Albert Greenfield Scholarship. He is the youngest-ever winner of the Horizon Award from the Westport Arts Center, following in the footsteps of past honorees, such as John Corigliano, Fritz Reiner and Paul Newman, and was awarded the Broadus Erle Prize in 2011, given to the most outstanding violinist at the Yale School of Music.
Born in Moscow, Igor Pikayzen started his studies at age fivewith his grandfather, the illustrious violinist Viktor Pikayzen. In 1999 he moved to the United States, to study at the Manhattan School of Music with Taiwanese violinist Keng-Yuen Tseng. In 2004, he became a student of Stefan Milenkovic and the following year was accepted to the Juilliard School on full scholarship, as a student of Dean Stephen Clapp. After having completed his master's degree and artist diploma at the Yale School of Music, as a student of Syoko Aki, Pikayzen is currently a DMA candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is working with Rolf Schulte. In 2012 he has been named an Enhanced Chancellor Fellow at the University.
Igor Pikayzen makes his home in New York City and plays on Carlo Antonio Testore (c.1720) and Wojciech Topa (2011) violins.
