Natalia Poznyakovskaya was a Russian and Soviet pianist and music teacher. She was born on 12 December 1889 in Kyiv, into the family of a collegiate secretary, and died on 9 January 1981 in Leningrad. She graduated from the Ministry Gymnasium and the Music School in Kyiv before studying piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Anna Yesipova from 1909 to 1913. She completed her conservatory course with a gold medal.
For her graduation examination, Poznyakovskaya performed Camille Saint-Saëns's piano concerto with orchestra. She received the Anton Rubinstein Prize and was awarded a Schröder grand piano. In 1914, she won first prize at the Vera Erakova competition for women pianists.
Her long teaching career was closely associated with the St. Petersburg, later Leningrad, Conservatory. She served as Yesipova's assistant in the piano class until 1913, then became a teacher, senior teacher, and professor. Her professorship included appointments from 1926 to 1944 and again from 1964 to 1973; she was professor-consultant from 1973 to 1978 and subsequently returned as professor until her death. She also taught piano at the Third State Music Technical School from 1927 to 1941, directing its piano department in 1936–1937, and acted as dean of the faculty in 1942. In August 1942 she was evacuated to Novosibirsk Region, where she worked at a collective-farm club until 1944.
From 1944 to 1963, Poznyakovskaya was professor and head of the piano department at the Ural Conservatory. Alongside this position, she taught piano from 1945 to 1963 at the ten-year music school attached to the conservatory. Among her pupils were Roman Gruber, Mikhail Frolov, Vladimir Portnoy, Konstantin Liberov, Valery Bibergan, and Igor Rogalyov.
As a concert pianist, she appeared in Alexander Siloti's symphony-orchestra programmes in Pavlovsk between 1913 and 1916 and gave a series of solo recitals in the Small Hall of the Petrograd, later Leningrad, State Conservatory from 1920 to 1925. At the composer's request, she gave the first Leningrad performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto in 1924. She also participated in chamber programmes of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, performed sonata evenings with cellist Vladimir Wolf-Israel, and played in a trio with violinist Vladimir Sher and cellist Yevgeny Wolf-Israel. In the 1950s she performed in a piano duo with Ilya Renzin, and in the 1960s in a duo with violinist Lyudmila Nikiforova.
Poznyakovskaya gave solo recitals in Sverdlovsk and elsewhere in the Urals. Her repertoire included works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, and Nikolai Myaskovsky; she also played the piano parts in quintets by Mikhail Glinka and Sergei Taneyev and in a quartet by Johannes Brahms. She made concert recordings for radio and television. The Musical Encyclopedia described her playing as marked by freshness of interpretation, nobility of performance style, and brilliant finger technique.
She also wrote on performance and pedagogy, including an article on the performing and pedagogical principles of Anna Yesipova's school, published in 1957, and “A Living Tradition,” an account of Yesipova's class, published in 1966.