Igor Oistrakh was a Soviet and Russian violinist, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Odessa on April 27, 1931, to violinist David Oistrakh and pianist Tamara Rotareva. He began studying music in early childhood, taking up the violin at six and the piano two years later.
Oistrakh graduated from the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory in 1949, the conservatory’s violin program in 1955, and its postgraduate program in 1958. He studied violin with his father. While still a student, he won first prizes at the World Festival of Youth and Students’ International Violin Competition in Budapest in 1949 and the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań in 1952. In 1958, he joined the Moscow Conservatory staff and became a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic.
He performed in a duo with his father and made many recordings with him, including performances with orchestras led by his father. He also appeared with Yehudi Menuhin and with orchestras conducted by Otto Klemperer, Eugene Ormandy, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. His recordings included Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Bach’s sonatas for violin and harpsichord with pianist Natalia Zertsalova, Tikhon Khrennikov’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and three pieces for violin and orchestra, and Yevgeny Svetlanov’s poem in memory of David Oistrakh.
Oistrakh began conducting in 1968, leading the Moscow Philharmonic’s ensemble of soloists. His conducting debut abroad took place in Copenhagen that year. He conducted the Moscow and Leningrad Philharmonic orchestras and orchestras in London, Berlin, Vienna, and Brussels. His Western concert debut was at London’s Royal Albert Hall, followed by tours in the United States, Europe, Canada, South America, Japan, and Australia. He served on the juries of the Tchaikovsky International Competition, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition, and the David Oistrakh International Violin Competition in Moscow.
From 1996 to 2010, Oistrakh was a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where he lived and worked with his family. He returned to Russia in 2011. He received first prizes at the two violin competitions he had won as a student and was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1989. Oistrakh died in Moscow on August 14, 2021, aged 90, from acute heart failure. After cremation, his ashes were buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.