She sat as a jury member on international competitions such as the Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition, the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Leeds Piano Competition. She recorded her own transcription of Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf". Nikolayeva was the teacher of Nikolai Lugansky; shortly before her death, she declared him "The Next One" in the line of great Russian pianists. Among her other students was András Schiff, whom she taught in summer courses at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. She died on November 22, 1993 in San Francisco after succumbing to a brain haemorrhage during a performance of one of the Op. 87 fugues at the Herbst Theatre.