Nikolai Petrov (pianist)

Nikolai Arnoldovich Petrov (Russian: Никола́й Арно́льдович Петро́в, 14 April 1943 – 3 August 2011) was a Russian pianist.

Petrov was born in Moscow, the son of the cellist Arnold Ferkelman and the grandson of the operatic bass Vasily Rodionovich Petrov, and began learning the piano at the age of three. At the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory his teacher was Tatyana Kestner and in 1961 Petrov entered the class of Yakov Zak at the Conservatory itself. He subsequently won second prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas and won second prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels.

Petrov gave regular performances in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory as well as touring widely and appearing at major world venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Royal Festival Hall (London) and the Teatro Colón. Petrov's large repertoire included more than fifty concertos and he worked with many prominent conductors, including Mariss Jansons, Kirill Kondrashin, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Yevgeny Svetlanov and Yuri Temirkanov.

His awards included the Grande Médaille d'Or of the Académie Balzac, People's Artist of the USSR and the Russian State Prize. In 1998, he founded the Nikolai Petrov International Philanthropic Foundation.