Oleg Kagan was a Soviet violinist and Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Born on November 21, 1946, in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk into a physician's family, he was introduced to the violin by his father, an amateur musician who had taught himself the instrument.
After his family moved to Riga in 1953, Kagan studied violin at the music school attached to the conservatory with Joachim Braun. At thirteen, he was brought to Moscow by the violinist Boris Kuznetsov and joined Kuznetsov's class at the Central Music School; from 1964 he continued his studies at the conservatory. That year he placed fourth at the Enescu Competition in Bucharest. He won the International Sibelius Violin Competition in 1965, received second prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition the following year, and won the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1968.
Following Kuznetsov's death, Kagan entered David Oistrakh's class. Oistrakh helped him record a cycle of Mozart's five violin concertos. From 1969, Kagan developed a long-standing artistic partnership with pianist Sviatoslav Richter, and their duo soon achieved international renown.
Kagan also worked closely with cellist Natalia Gutman, who later became his wife, as well as violist Yuri Bashmet and pianists Vasily Lobanov, Alexei Lyubimov, and Eliso Virsaladze. With these musicians, he performed in chamber ensembles at the festival in Kuhmo, Finland, and at his own summer festival in Zvenigorod. In the late 1980s he planned a festival in Kreuth in the Bavarian Alps, but his early death prevented the project from being fully realized. He nevertheless gave a final performance there shortly before his death. The Kreuth festival, founded by Gutman and subsequently directed by her, has been held in his memory.
Regarded as a brilliant chamber musician, Kagan also performed major concerto repertoire. His performance with Gutman of Brahms's Concerto for Violin and Cello with Orchestra was particularly acclaimed. Alfred Schnittke, Tigran Mansurian, and Anatol Vieru dedicated works to the Kagan-Gutman duo.
His repertoire included works by composers then rarely performed in the Soviet Union, including Paul Hindemith, Olivier Messiaen, and composers of the Second Viennese School. He gave the first performances of works dedicated to him by Schnittke, Mansurian, and Sofia Gubaidulina, and was also an outstanding interpreter of Bach and Mozart. Numerous recordings of his playing have been released on compact disc.
Kagan died of cancer in Munich on July 15, 1990, and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow. In 1997, director Andrei Khrzhanovsky made the film Oleg Kagan: Life After Life.