Born on July 30th, 1927, in the village of Zargizan in the Meleuzovskij region of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialistic
Republic.
He was born with only one arm. When he needed to sing on stage, he wore a black glove.
His father and mother loved to sing, his uncle was considered a good singer. After finishing school, Pishchaev sang in an amateur
troupe. He participated in the Republican singing competition in Ishimbaj, and won another singing contest in the city of Ufa.
1945–1948, he studied in Ufa in the Bashkir Music College (class of A. Chernov-Sher). After Chernov-Sher had passed away,
Pishchaev, without finishing his studies, went to Moscow, hoping to enroll in a conservatory.
Pishchaev became famous in 1952, when he was still a 4th-grade conservatory student, after a very successful performance in the Big
Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, in a concert dedicated to the memory of Leonid Sobinov,
where he sang the romance of Nadir. In 1953, he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (class of Sergej Judin), and the same year he was invited to sing at the Moscow Philharmonic. He gave concerts
of arias, romances, folk songs.
1963–64, he performed all the romances of Chajkovskij in four concerts. He repeated the same cycle in 1965, 1971, 1975. Other
than Pishchaev, only Sergej Lemeshev did the same.
Pischaev's strength lay not in the power of his voice, or outward expression, but in lyricism, fluency, finesse of phrasing. The
Soviet critics praised him for his mastering of nuances, lightness of register shifts, warmth and brightness of his voice.
Pishchaev's repertoire included romances by Glinka, Rachmaninoff, vocal cycles by Mahler, de Falla, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, as
well as folk songs and works of Soviet composers.
Already from the 1950s, his singing was broadcast on radio and television.
On stage, he appeared at the Bashkir Opera Theater in Ufa, and later at the Malij in Leningrad, as Beppe and Lenskij. In 1988, he
performed the role of the Astrologer in "Zolotoj petushok/The golden cockerel" on the stage of the Bolshoj.
Went on tours in Russia and abroad – Austria, Hungary, Germany, Romania, Finland. Worked with such great masters as Pavel
Lisitsian, Samuil Samosud, E. F. Svetlanov, Dimiter Uzunov. Acclaimed Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
(1965).
In 1980, he started teaching in the vocal department of GITIS (Institute for Theatrical Arts).