Viktor Pikaizen was a Soviet and Russian violinist and music teacher, an international competition prizewinner, Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1979), People's Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1989), and professor at the Moscow Conservatory. He was born in Kyiv on 15 February 1933.
He began studying the violin at the age of five. From 1939 to 1941 he attended the music school of the Kyiv Conservatory; during evacuation in Alma-Ata from 1941 to 1944, he continued his studies there. He subsequently studied at the Gnesins Moscow Secondary Special Music School in the class of David Oistrakh, and later with Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory, completing postgraduate study in 1960. Pikaizen was Oistrakh's only pupil to study with him continuously from music school through the completion of postgraduate training.
From the early 1960s, Pikaizen pursued an active concert career. He was among the few violinists to perform all of Paganini's caprices in concert on 78 occasions; the final such performance took place in Milan in 2004 and was highly successful.
He received second prizes at competitions in Prague in 1949, Paris in 1957, and Moscow at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958. In 1965, he won the Paganini Competition. He taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1966 to 1986 and again from 2006 to 2016, and became a professor at the State Conservatory in Ankara, Turkey, in 1993. He also taught violin at the Schnittke Moscow State Institute of Music and at the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory, and was invited to serve on juries for numerous competitions.
Pikaizen's playing was distinguished by formidable technique and nobility of style. His performances of solo violin works by J. S. Bach and Niccolò Paganini were especially renowned. His repertoire also included classical violin concertos and works by contemporary composers, including Béla Bartók, Aram Khachaturian, and Mieczysław Weinberg.
Boris Tchaikovsky dedicated to Pikaizen a violin concerto regarded as one of the most significant works in 20th-century music. Pikaizen gave its premiere in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on 25 April 1970, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin. His daughter, Tatiana Pikaizen, is a pianist, and his grandson, Igor Pikaizen, is a violinist.