An Emeritus Artist of the Russian Federation at the time of her death, Gornostayeva was a graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where her teacher was Heinrich Neuhaus.
[1] In addition to her performing career,[2] Gornostaeva was a professor at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
Other educational activities included leading annual seminars for Russian music teachers, giving lectures on radio and TV on classical music and the performing arts, and publishing articles and books.
Gornostayeva was renowned for having trained about 50 prize winners of international piano competitions[citation needed], including Alexander Slobodyanik, Semion Kruchin, Valery Sigalevitch, Petras Geniušas, Dina Joffe, Yuri Lisichenko, Pavel Egorov, Alexander Paley, Eteri Andjaparidze, Ivo Pogorelich, Irene Inzerillo, Aleksandra Romanić, Sergei Babayan, Marian Pivka, Maxim Philippov, Vassily Primakov, Ayako Uehara, Maki Sekiya,[3] Yurie Miura, Lukas Geniušas, Vadym Kholodenko, Stanislav Khristenko, Andrey Gugnin, Margarita Shevchenko.
She made numerous recordings for Melodiya, Philips, Phoenix, Yamaha, LP Classics, and other labels of piano works by Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Schumann, Schubert, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Mussorgsky.