Nicolai Mednikoff a student at the Petrograd Conservatory. At fourteen he made his Berlin recital début. He came to the United States in 1914. He concertised and recorded with Pablo Casals, and in 1929 established the Westchester Conservatory. He died in White Plains, New York on 19 April 1942, as the result of suicide by shooting himself through the heart in his Conservatory office.