Viktoria Postnikova

Viktoria Valentinovna Postnikova (born 12 January 1944) is a Russian pianist.

Postnikova was born in Moscow into a family of musicians. She entered the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory at age six, studying with E.B. Musaelian. She graduated in 1967, having studied there and in postgraduate courses with Professor Yakov Flier. In 1965 she won a prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition. She subsequently also won prizes at the Leeds International Piano Competition in England, the Vianna da Motta International Music Competition in Lisbon, and the Fourth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Her repertoire is extremely broad, covering works by composers such as Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Rachmaninoff and from more contemporary periods music by Busoni, Ives, Britten, Shostakovich and Schnittke. One of her greatest accomplishments is her recording of Tchaikovsky's complete piano works.

She takes part in concerts, recordings and recitals at home and abroad with her conductor husband Gennady Rozhdestvensky, whom she married in 1969. She is also an accomplished chamber musician, having given recitals in the CIS and France with Yehudi Menuhin featuring the complete Brahms violin and piano sonatas along with sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók.

Postnikova has recorded all three Tchaikovsky concertos for Decca; the Busoni Piano Concerto along with the complete piano music of Tchaikovsky, Janáček and Glinka for Erato; violin sonatas by Richard Strauss and Busoni for Chandos; and the complete piano concertos of Brahms, Chopin and Prokofiev among many other recordings for Melodiya.