[1] Described by The New York Times as an "internationally known virtuoso" and "one of the country's most distinguished musical residents",[2] Yablonskaya has toured in concert and recital throughout the world and has made numerous recordings.
Yablonskaya was invited to perform with orchestras and in concert halls in the West during the 1960s and 1970s, but was never allowed to accept the engagements by the Soviet government.
In 1975 Yablonskaya, along with her father and son, applied for a visa to emigrate to the United States, a move which caused her to be fired from her post at the Moscow Conservatory and which blacklisted her from all concert venues in the USSR.
She waited for over two years to obtain a visa which was approved largely due to a petition which had been organized by American composers, conductors, musicians, movie actors, writers and senators such as Elie Wiesel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Katharine Hepburn, Shelley Winters, Norman Mailer, Henry F. Miller and many others.
Educated at Juilliard, he has become principal cellist of the Bergen Symphony Orchestra in Norway,[1] and they have given mother and son recitals to critical acclaim.