Mikhail Fikhtengolts was a Soviet violinist and pedagogue. He was born on 1 June 1920 in Odessa and died on 4 June 1985 in Moscow. In 1970 he became a professor, and in 1983 he was awarded the title People's Artist of the RSFSR.
He studied in Odessa with Pyotr Stolyarsky, then at the Moscow Conservatory with Abram Yampolsky, graduating in 1938, and later in postgraduate study with Miron Polyakin. He began concertizing at the age of ten. In 1935 he won second prize at the All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians, and in 1937 he became a laureate of the Eugène Ysaÿe International Violin Competition, receiving sixth prize.
From 1933 he made gramophone recordings. From 1941 he was a soloist of the Moscow Philharmonic. Beginning in 1947 he taught at the Gnessin Musical-Pedagogical Institute, where he was appointed professor in 1970. In 1953 he earned the degree of Candidate of Art Studies.
Fikhtengolts's repertoire included the entire violin legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, including cycles of sonatas and concertos, as well as works by Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian and foreign classical composers, and contemporary composers. He was the first performer of sonatas dedicated to him by Mieczysław Weinberg: the first and second sonatas for solo violin and the third sonata for violin and piano.
He also created concert arrangements, transcriptions, editions, and cadenzas, and wrote scholarly and methodological works and articles. He toured abroad and was an honorary member of the Eugène Ysaÿe International Music Foundation. He was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
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