Short biography

Olga Nazaykinskaya was born in Moscow in 1962 into a family of musicians. Graduated from the Tchaikovski Moscow State Conservatory, she became a professor of this institution. She taught musical analysis, polyphony, harmony and musical theory for 22 years (until 2012).

At the same time, she studied singing with Professor Elizaveta Novikova and began her career as a performer. She participated in concerts of classical, romantic and especially baroque music alongside professional musicians but also made music with amateurs, notably with the MSU Chamber Orchestra conducted by Alexander Konstantinov.

From 2008 Olga learns to play viola da gamba, first as an autodidact, then with the help of Peter Wagner and Paolo Pandolfo during various courses.

Since her childhood, the musician has been passionate about composition. During her studies at the music college, she attended the composition course of Professor Konstantin Batashov as a free listener. Between 1975 and 1981, she composed her first pieces for piano, including the "Aquarelles" (1979-1980) performed for the first time in 2020 by Erica Sipes as part of the "Piano music she wrote" project. In 2001, Olga prepared the performance of "A Book of Ayres" by Philip Rosseter on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of this work. She made an arrangement for voice, recorder, 2 violins, harpsichord, lute and bass viol and composed the variations for harpsichord on one of the themes of this collection.

But it is from 2010 that composition takes an increasingly important place in her life. Thus appear "Fantasy and Fugue in E minor" for string orchestra and "Trio Sonata in D major" (both in the style of W.F.Bach) followed by "Concerto for 2 bass viols, strings and organ", the cycle of songs for soprano and piano "Chansons d’une étrangère" and the others. (See the works page).

Olga Nazaykinskaya wanted to make her scores accessible to everybody and for this purpose she put them online on the IMSLP (Petrucci Music Library) website. The scores admitted under Creative Commons licenses are available for download in PDF format.