For many years Nikolayev was a professor of piano at the Leningrad Conservatory, and was for a short and unsuccessful period director of the institution.
His students at the Conservatory included Vladimir Sofronitsky, Maria Yudina, Dmitri Shostakovich,[1] Vera Razumovskaya, Nathan Perelman, Wiktor Łabuński, Vera Vinogradova, Samary Savshinsky, Nadia Reisenberg, and Alexander Zakin.
He didn't create a school in the specific sense of some single narrow professional direction.
He shaped and nurtured a broad aesthetic trend in the sphere of pianistic art.
Nikolayev was evacuated to Tashkent along with other musicians, after Germany invaded Russia in 1941, and died there in 1942.