Born in Leningrad (St Petersburg), the pianist Irina Schnittke studied at the Leningrad Conservatory and at the Gnesin Institute in Moscow. She boasts a particularly wide repertoire of music by twentieth-century Russian composers from Shostakovich and Prokofiev to Schnittke, whom she married in 1961. He dedicated to her his Variation uber einen Akkord and his Piano Sonata No. 2 and to her and her piano duo partner Viktoria Postnikova his Concerto for Piano Duo and Chamber Orchestra. She has given first performances and made recordings of compositions by her late husband together with Mark Lubotsky and with Mstislav Rostropovich. Irina Schnittke has a busy international career as a solo performer and in partnership with Viktoria Postnikova.
