Born in Leningrad, the pianist Irina Schnittke started her music studies at the age of six at the Leningrad Conservatory, and eventually graduated from the Gnesin Music Institute in Moscow. Her teachers were Anna Shklovskaya, Yakov Flier and Leonid Brumberg. Irina Schnittke's repertoire covers the major 20th-century Russian composers from Shostakovich and Prokofiev to Sviridov, Slonimski, Tischenko, Gavrilin, Chalayev, Gabelli and Alfred Schnittke, whom she married in 1961. Alfred Schnittke dedicated the Variationen über einen Akkord (1965) and the Piano Sonata No. 2 (1992) to his wife. Irina Schnittke has gained an international reputation for her interpretations of these and other works by her husband. Since 1984 she has formed a piano duo together with Viktoria Postnikova. Together with Mark Lubotsky, she premièred in 1994 the Violin Sonata No. 3 (dedicated to Lubotsky) in Moscow.

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