Lyubov Borisovna Timofeyeva, born on March 7, 1951 in Buguruslan, Chkalov Region, Soviet Union, is a Soviet and Russian pianist and music teacher. She was named People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 1995 and became an academician of the International Academy of Creativity.
She studied piano at the Central Music School in the class of A. D. Artobolevskaya. Her first major performance took place when she was eight years old. At the age of fourteen she entered the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied with Yakov Zak and Heinrich Neuhaus. She graduated from the conservatory in 1973 and then continued advanced training with Zak, completing that course two years later.
Timofeyeva gained recognition early in her career through major international competitions. In 1968 she won third prize at the Montreal International Performing Competition. In 1969, at the age of eighteen, she took first prize at the Marguerite Long and Jacques Thibaud Competition. In 1966 she had also won first prize at Concertino Prague.
During her performing career she toured in more than forty countries, including the United States, France, Argentina, and Germany. She appeared with leading ensembles such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Saxon State Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Among the noted conductors with whom she performed were Kurt Sanderling, Herbert Blomstedt, Kirill Kondrashin, Yevgeny Svetlanov, and Mariss Jansons.
Teachers and critics described her playing as marked by flawless pianism, confidence and charm in interpretation, and sincerity in performance. She worked as a soloist with the Russian State Concert Company Sodruzhestvo and the Moscow State Academic Philharmonic. As a teacher, she served as a professor at Ferris University in Japan.
Among the composers she especially valued were Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Sergei Prokofiev. She released more than forty recordings, including complete piano sonatas by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as the complete études of Frédéric Chopin. In 2012 she published her autobiography, Symphony of My Life.