The cellist Boris Pergamenschikov was born in 1948 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) into a family of musicians and studied at the Conservatory there with Professor Emanuel Fischmann. While still a student at the Conservatory he was playing concerts with the leading orchestras of Moscow and St. Petersburg. His international career started in 1974 when he won the first prize and gold medal at the fifth Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. After emigrating to the West in 1977, he intensified his concert activities worldwide. Boris Pergamenschikow is a celebrated guest in music cities and at music festivals from Berlin to Tokyo and from Salzburg to Jerusalem. Following his debut in New York in 1984 "The New York Times" wrote of his performance, "…a world class cellist by any reckoning... his performances were on a technical, tonal, musical and interpretative level that only a small handful of cellists could match." Boris Pergamenschikow plays on a regular basis with orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Royal Phlharmonic London, Bavarian Radio Symphony, BBC Symphony, NHK Tokyo, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic, etc. The artist is guest of festivals like the Salzburg Festival, Vienna Festival, the "Mostly Mozart" in New York, Edinburgh Festival, Schleswig Holstein Festival etc. Boris Pergamenschikow works with such eminent musicians as Claudio Abbado, the Amadeus Berg-Quartets, Gidon Kremer, Mstislav Rostropovich, Andras Schiff and Wolfgang Schneiderhan. He has also collaborated with such artists as Yehudi Menuhin and Sandor Végh. His interest in contemporary music resulted in his collaboration with Shostakovich, Lutosławski, Dutilleux, Penderecki, Gubaidulina, Schnittke, Kurtag, Ustvolskaya and many other great composers.

Apart from his concert tours, he taught a master class from 1977 to 1992 at the music university of Cologne as well as many master-courses in Europe and Asia. Since autumn 1998, he is Professor at the Hans Eisler musical university in Berlin. As soloist and chamber musician he records regularly for EMI, ORFEO, CHANDOS, HÄNSSLER and DECCA. One of his most recent recordings, the cello concerto Tout le monde lointain by Henri Dutilleux has been received very enthusiastically by the press and was awarded the Diapason d'Or. His recording of the complete Solo Suites of J.S. Bach was met with a very positive worldwide resonance. In June 2001, Boris Pergamenschikow performed the world premiere of a new work of Krzysztof Penderecki during a Japan tour as soloist with the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

The artist died in April 2004.