At the age of five Lifschitz came to the Gnessin Specialized Music School in Moscow.
At the final exam (1994) he played the Goldberg Variations, Gaspard de la nuit and works by Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin.
[1] His other teachers were Teodor Gutman, Vladimir Tropp, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Fou Ts'ong, Alfred Brendel, Leon Fleischer, Rosalyn Tureck, Hamish Milne and Charles Rosen.
Conductors were Andrey Boreyko, Bernard Haitink, Eliahu Inbal, Marek Janowski, Michail Jurowski, Eri Klas, Fabio Luisi, Neville Marriner, Claudio Scimone, Yuri Temirkanov, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mstislav Rostropovich.
He performs or performed chamber music with string quartets and soloists as Gidon Kremer, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Leila Josefowicz, Mischa Maisky, Lynn Harrell, Carolin Widmann, Bella Davidovich, Valery Afanassiev, Natalia Gutman, Jörg Widmann, Sol Gabetta, Alexei Volodin, Daishin Kashimoto, Maxim Vengerov, Mstislav Rostropovich (died 2007) and Eugene Ugorski (born 1989).