Yakov Kreizberg (Russian: Яков Крейцберг; born Yakov Mayevich Bychkov, 24 October 1959 – 15 March 2011) was a Russian-born American conductor.

Early years
In the Soviet Union
Yakov Bychkov was born in Leningrad into a family of Jewish ancestry. His father, May Bychkov, was a doctor and military scientist. His maternal great-grandfather, Yakov Kreizberg,was a conductor at the Odessa Opera.His brother is Semyon Bychkov (born in 1952).

Yakov Bychkov began studying piano at age 5. He attended the Glinka Choir School, where he began composing at age 13. He subsequently studied conducting with Ilya Musin,as did his brother. In later years, Kreizberg summarised his conducting education as follows:

"What Musin taught was a foundation; everything else I learned from master classes of very good and bad conductors. From the bad, I learned what not to do."

Semyon Bychkov had emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1975. Yakov Bychkov had also hoped to emigrate, but his father's professional status and perceived security risk were barriers to emigration. His emigration only became possible when his father chose to divorce his mother, to allow for mother and son to leave the country.By that time, he had composed numerous works, all unpublished, in manuscript. The Soviet authorities, however, did not allow any handwritten material to be taken out of the country, so he had to leave his compositions behind. The experience was such that he gave up composition and decided to become a conductor,although he also stated later that he "realised I didn't have enough talent for it".

In the United States
Following his emigration to the United States with his mother in 1976, Yakov Bychkov attended the Mannes School of Music, as did his brother, who counted among his conducting teachers, and graduated in 1981. One of his first public appearances as conductor was on 30 March 1980 at the Marble Collegiate Church, leading Haydn's Symphony No. 88. For his graduation concert, he conducted the Mannes Orchestra on 6 March 1981. Around this time, he changed his surname to his mother’s maiden name, Kreizberg, to distinguish himself from his older brother.

On the advice of Seiji Ozawa, Kreizberg moved to the University of Michigan to do his graduate studies in conducting, where his teachers included Gustav Meier. He took US citizenship in 1982 He became the first student there to earn a doctorate in both orchestral and operatic conducting, and won the school's Eugene Ormandy Prize.

Kreizberg spent summers at Tanglewood continuing his conducting studies with Erich Leinsdorf, Ozawa, and Leonard Bernstein.He received a scholarship at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, where he continued work with Bernstein and was invited back to be assistant to Michael Tilson Thomas.Later in his career, in 2006, Kreizberg acknowledged Bernstein as the conductor whom he most admired:

"The conductor I most admire and respect is Leonard Bernstein. He had a phenomenal musical talent. Not only was he a great conductor but also a wonderful composer, fabulous pianist, and a powerful educator of young audiences. One could agree or disagree with his approach to a particular score but ultimately he was so unbelievably passionate about music, and so convincing in his reading of the piece, that one couldn't help but feel that his way of interpreting it was the only right way. He even made works that, generally speaking, were not considered the most important seem like masterpieces. "

From 1985 to 1988, Kreizberg was director of the orchestra at Mannes, and also taught conducting to a select number of students.During this period, he also conducted concerts of the New York City Symphony. In 1986, Kreizberg won first prize in the American Symphony Orchestra's Stokowski Conducting Competition,which resulted in a 2 March 1986 concert at Carnegie Hall,subsequently repeated the following week (March 9) at Newark Symphony Hall.

Kreizberg also worked as an accompanist to vocal students and accompanied productions such as Theatre Opera Music Institute's 1981 production of Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri. He accompanied and toured with Roberta Peters in the late 1980s.

Professional career
Opera
Kreizberg was General Music Director (GMD) of the United Municipal Theaters of Krefeld and Mönchengladbach from 1988 to 1994, where his work included a notable revival of Aribert Reimann's opera-oratorio Troades, which the composer himself received enthusiastically. At the time of his 1986 appointment to the post, he was age 27, the youngest GMD ever appointed in Germany up to that time.

Kreizberg later was GMD of the Komische Oper Berlin from 1994 to 2001. During his tenure there, he conducted 10 new opera productions and 38 orchestral concerts, as well as 2 ballets. In particular, in 1994, Kreizberg conducted Berthold Goldschmidt's Der gewaltige Hanrei in its first staging since 1932. Other work there in contemporary opera included a production of Hans Werner Henze's König Hirsch. For his work at the Komische Oper, he received the Kritikerpreis für Musik in 1997 by the Verband der deutschen Kritiker e.V., the German music critics association. Kreizberg noted difficulties with funding, job cuts, and inability to fill vacancies as factors in his departure from the Komische Oper Berlin.

Kreizberg first conducted at Glyndebourne Opera in 1992, the Nikolaus Lehnhoff production of Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa. He returned in 1995 for Deborah Warner's production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni (1995, documented on DVD), and Lehnhoff’s production of Janáček's Káťa Kabanová (1998). He spoke of opera conducting generally as follows:

"Working in opera is the single best experience a conductor can get. Without it, he will never develop into what he could be. Singers, good and bad, teach you to be more flexible and to learn things a symphony orchestra will never teach you." 

Orchestral posts
Kreizberg's duties as GMD in Krefeld-Monchengladbach included the chief conductorship of the Niederrheinsche Sinfoniker. During his tenure, Kreizberg instituted special annual concerts devoted to an individual composer, which the orchestra continued after his tenure. In 1993, Kreizberg began his affiliation with the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra as its Music Director and Chief Conductor.

In the UK, Kreizberg made his debut at The Proms conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra on 3 August 1993, and returned each year from 1994 to 2000. He served as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1995 to 2000. During his Bournemouth tenure, he led the orchestra in its Carnegie Hall debut on 17 April 1997. With the Bournemouth SO, he conducted the UK premiere of Berthold Goldschmidt's Passacaglia, op. 4, on 25 July 1996 in the presence of the composer, just months before Goldschmidt died. He also conducted the premiere of Peteris Vasks's Symphony No. 2 on 30 July 1999 at The Proms.

From 2003 to 2011, Kreizberg was Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. With his Netherlands ensembles, he recorded regularly for PENTATONE, which included several concerto recordings with Julia Fischer.Kreizberg and Fischer worked together regularly,and Fischer recalled her first meeting with Kreizberg in Philadelphia, where both artists were performing the violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian for the first time, following her arrival after a physically exhausting journey:

"Ich also mit der Geige in der Hand vom Auto auf die Bühne, seit fast zwei Tagen nicht geschlafen – ich war wirklich an meiner körperlichen Grenze. Wir trafen uns vor den Augen des Orchesters: Hallo, ich bin Yakov, ich bin Julia, schon mussten wir anfangen. Und es war, als hätten wir das Stück bereits hundertmal miteinander gespielt. Wir haben es völlig gleich interpretiert."
(So I had the violin in my hand for nearly two days, without sleep, from the car to the stage - I was really at my physical limit. We met in front of the orchestra: Hey, I'm Yakov, I'm Julia, already we had to start. And it was as if we had already performed together a hundred times. We interpreted it exactly the same.)"
Kreizberg had been scheduled to stand down formally from the Netherlands Philharmonic and Netherlands Chamber Orchestras at the end of the 2010-2011 season. His final concert was on 14 February 2011 with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, one month before his death.

Elsewhere in Europe, Kreizberg was Principal Guest Conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 2003 to 2009.In 2007, he received the Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst in recognition of his music work in Austria. During the 2008-2009 season, Kreizberg was Artist-in-Residence at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the first conductor to be so honoured. Kreizberg was Music Director and Artistic Director of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra from 2009 until his death in 2011. His original contract had designated an appointment to the Monte Carlo post for 5 years, but his final illness had begun to manifest itself by the summer of 2010.

In the United States, Kreizberg made his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut in 1992. His Los Angeles Philharmonic debut was in 1993 at the Hollywood Bowl. His New York Philharmonic debut was on 19 May 1999. With the Philadelphia Orchestra, he conducted over 30 concerts between 1999 and 2007, including deputising for the orchestra's then-outgoing music director Wolfgang Sawallisch on a 2003 tour of North and South America, when Sawallisch became too ill to travel.

In contemporary music, Kreizberg also conducted works by Judith Bingham, Jonathan Harvey, Hans Werner Henze, and Siegfried Matthus. As well, he led lesser-known works by Ernst Krenek, Franz Schmidt, Kurt Weill, Karol Szymanowski, and Igor Markevitch.[

In addition to his recording work with his Dutch ensembles, Kreizberg also recorded commercially with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Russian National Orchestra. His Vienna Symphony Orchestra recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 received two Grammy Awards nominations. His final recording was a Decca release with Julia Fischer and the Monte Carlo Philharmonic of tone poems for violin and orchestra.

Kreizberg died on 15 March 2011 in Monaco, aged 51. His remains were later transferred from Monaco to the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, with the inscription Musik war mein Leben ('Music was my life') on his gravestone.He married conductor Amy Andersson and they had two sons.