The Soviet authorities, specifically Anatoly Lunacharsky, would not allow Piatigorsky to travel abroad to further his studies, so he smuggled himself and his cello into Poland on a cattle train with a group of artists.

Now 18, Piatigorsky studied briefly in Berlin and Leipzig, with Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel, playing in a trio in a Russian café to earn money for food.

[2] After the Nazi occupation in World War II, the family left France on September 5, 1939, by boat for the United States from Le Havre[3] and settled in Elizabethtown in the Adirondack Mountains, New York, where Piatigorsky had already bought a house.

[5] In 1929, Piatigorsky first visited the United States, playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and the New York Philharmonic under Willem Mengelberg.

From 1941 to 1949, Piatigorsky was head of the cello department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and he also taught at Tanglewood, Boston University.

Piatigorsky participated in a chamber group with Arthur Rubinstein (piano), William Primrose (viola) and Jascha Heifetz (violin).

[7][8] Piatigorsky played chamber music privately with Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Pennario, and Nathan Milstein.

The great violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian reportedly once called Piatigorsky the greatest string player of all time.

Piatigorsky had a magnificent sound[weasel words] characterized by a distinctive fast and intense vibrato and he was able to execute with consummate articulation all manner of extremely difficult bowings, including a downbow staccato of which other string players could not help but be in awe.

He often attributed his penchant for drama to his student days when he accepted an engagement playing during the intermissions in recitals by the great Russian basso Feodor Chaliapin.

Denis Brott, a student of Piatigorsky, identified them as Casals, Hindemith, Garbousova, Morini, Salmond, Szigeti, Menuhin, Milstein, Kreisler, a self-portrait, Cassadó, Elman, Bolognini, Heifetz, and Horowitz.

In 1963, the Piatigorskys organized and financed a strong international tournament in Los Angeles, won by Paul Keres and Tigran Petrosian.