The estranged wife of acclaimed concert pianist Vadym Kholodenko has been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial for allegedly killing the couple's two young daughters by smothering them with pillows. 
 
 Sofya Tsygankova has been ordered committed by a Texas judge to a state mental health facility for 120 days of treatment with the hope that she will be able to face justice when she regains "a reasonable degree of rational understanding," court records revealed Wednesday. 
 
 In this 2014 file photo, award-winning concert pianist Vadym Kholodenko, poses with his wife Sofya Tsygankova and daughters Nika, 4, and Michela, at their home in Fort Worth, Texas. Joyce Marshall / AP 
 
 Tsygankova, who is 32 and charged with two counts of capital murder of a person under age 10, will remain in the Tarrant County jail until a bed becomes available at the mental health facility. 
 
 Prosecutors raised no objections to state Judge Ruben Gonzalez's order, which was signed on Monday. 
 
 Tsygankova has pleaded not guilty to charges of killing daughters Nika, 5, and Michaela, 1, at their Benbrook, Texas home. 
 
 Kholodenko, 30, is a Ukrainian musician whose critically-acclaimed career took off after he won the gold medal at the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2013. 
 
 Police said that when the pianist arrived at his wife's home March 17 to pick up the girls and take them to preschool, he found Tsyganova covered in blood with cuts on her wrists and the two children dead in their beds. 
 
 Tsygankova had visited a state mental health facility in Fort Worth a day before her daughters were found dead, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. 
 
 Inside the home, police found an empty prescription bottle of quetiapine, an antipsychotic drug used to treat such mental illnesses as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, the paper reported. 
 
 Kholodenko resumed playing concerts a month after his girls were killed. 
 
 "In this time of extreme loss and sorrow, I must look to music which has been so important in my life, and through which I can express myself," he said in a statement. "I ask those who will attend my concerts to also focus on the music. I continue to be grateful for those who are sending support from all over the world." ||||| Vadym Kholodenko, left, with Sofya Tsygankova and daughters Nika, 4, and Michela in Fort Worth in 2014. (Joyce Marshall/Star-Telegram via AP, File) 
 
 Three years ago, an intense, dark-haired man sat down at a grand piano with no sheet music to show the world why he — and none of his 132 rivals — should win the prestigious, quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth. In the competition’s preliminary round, Vadym Kholodenko, a 26-year-old native of Ukraine, blew through a piece by the minimalist composer John Adams, then turned to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor — a challenging work that typically exceeds 30 minutes and grapples with the devil’s influence on our lives. And Kholodenko made it look like a breeze. 
 
 Kholodenko went on to win the Cliburn’s 2013 gold medal — earning $50,000, recording and management deals, and a string of concert dates that ran three years. But now the young virtuoso’s life has been struck by tragedy: In what some are calling part of a “curse” related to the Cliburn competition, Kholodenko’s estranged wife Sofya Tsygankova has been charged with murdering their two young children. 
 
 On March 17, Kholodenko found his daughters — Nika Kholodenko, 5, and Michela Kholodenko, 1 — dead at the home in suburban Fort Worth where he formerly lived with his family. The children’s bodies had no visible trauma, and the cause of their death is not yet known, as the Associated Press reported. But Tsygankova was home with her dead daughters — in “an extreme state of distress,” as authorities noted — and appeared to have been the victim of a stabbing. Days after she was treated and began a mental evaluation, police said Tsygankova killed her daughters before attempting to stab herself, and she now faces capital murder charges as investigators say they are looking into alleged “homicidal violence.” 
 
 “I’m not going to discuss what she told us. We do have reason to believe the stab wounds were self-inflicted,” David Babcock, police commander in Benbrook, Tex., told WFAA. “She’s still undergoing the mental evaluation. But she’s also held on our charges as well.” 
 
 The estranged wife of celebrated Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko is being charged with killing the couple's two daughters - aged five and one - at their home in suburban Fort Worth, Tex., police said on March 21. (Reuters) 
 
 Like her husband, Tsygankova, 31, was a competitive pianist. She was born in Russia “to a musical family,” one online biography noted, and “began to study music at age 6, and at age 9 won her first all-Russian contest.” She married Kholodenko in 2010, and the family relocated to Fort Worth after Kholodenko won the Cliburn. Kholodenko was often off performing; Tsygankova was committed to learning English. 
 
 “I have so many friends here and people are so kind to me, so I made the decision to stay,” Kholodenko said in 2014. “I would like to be part of this country.” He added: “It’s better for my daughters to raise [them] here.” 
 
 Tsygankova said the couple was motivated to move by a skin condition for which her older daughter couldn’t get proper treatment, as well as by her desire to see her husband more often. 
 
 “We didn’t see a lot of Vadym in Moscow when he’s traveling a lot,” Tsygankova said. “… It would be impossible for him to come home for one day between concerts.” She added: “We wanted to be together, with Vadym, to be a family, and for us, maybe it was the only choice for us to come here.” 
 
 At first, the family found lodging with Imelda Castro, an immigrant from the Philippines who hosted Kholodenko during the Cliburn competition. 
 
 “I know how difficult it is not to have anybody when you are new in a place,” Castro said. “They are very good kids. … They are very easy to host and they like my food! That’s important.” 
 
 And the young couple was grateful. 
 
 “It was incredible hospitality to have guests for half a year in your house,” Tsygankova said. 
 
 However, classical pianists, particularly those embroiled in the cutthroat world of piano competitions, are not strangers to passionate music played for scrutinizing audiences under stressful conditions on the road. Something went wrong. 
 
 
 
 Kholodenko and Tsygankova in 2014. (Richard W. Rodriguez, Star-Telegram via AP) 
 
 The couple moved into their own home in 2014, but filed for divorce in November of last year. Kholodenko moved out, but continued to pick up his daughters in the morning. Police said they were called to the home on two occasions before the young girls’ deaths, but didn’t offer further details. 
 
 “The loss of my children will be with me forever,” Kholodenko said in a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “But I would like to say that I feel the support of the Fort Worth community and all people who are sending me messages all over the world … Wherever I go after this tragedy my heart will stay with the people here of Fort Worth and my daughters will rest in this soil.” 
 
 The Cliburn expressed condolences. 
 
 “The Cliburn family is mourning the loss of the precious Kholodenko girls,” Maggie Estes, a spokesman for the competition, said last week. “We are heartbroken and offer our prayers to Vadym and all affected by this overwhelming tragedy.” 
 
 Some said, however, that winning the Cliburn comes with a “curse.” 
 
 “That usually refers to careers briefly boosted by winning one of the top prizes in the quadrennial contest, then sinking into second-tier status, or worse,” Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News wrote. 
 
 
 
 Kholodenko in 2013. (Film Still Credit: Larry McConkey, The Cliburn) 
 
 Cantrell noted tragic outcomes for three Cliburn winners: Steven De Groote, a South African who won the gold in 1977 only to crash a small plane outside Phoenix in 1985, suffering terrible injuries before dying of AIDS in 1989 after receiving a transfusion of tainted blood; Alexei Sultanov, a reportedly difficult teenager who won the Cleburne in 1989 only to suffer strokes and die in 2005; and José Feghali, who shot himself in 2014. 
 
 “He took things to the absolute edge of the cliff, and it was very exciting to hear,” a Cliburn administrator said after Sultanov’s death. “He wasn’t afraid to take a chance on stage, and there aren’t a lot of pianists who do that. But that worked for him, and it worked against him.” 
 
 Cantrell said that winning the Cliburn comes with accolades, but it also comes with a grind. 
 
 “Some performers thrive for years in this rat race, but others become burned out and resentful,” he wrote. “Lengthy periods away from home take tolls on families and relationships, too. Kholodenko was often on tour for long stretches, leaving his wife, newly moved from Russia to Fort Worth, with a young daughter and a baby. You can imagine the stresses.” 
 
 
 
 Kholodenko in 2013. (Ron T. Ennis/ The Fort Worth Star-Telegram,via AP Photo, File) 
 
 Kholodenko and Tsygankova, after they relocated to Fort Worth, appeared ready to overcome such challenges. Though what happened is not yet clear, it is clear that they didn’t. 
 
 “It’s very important for me to be here so that I can hear my husband and how he’s practicing,” Tsygankova said in 2014. “Most of the time, his playing teaches me how to do it, and it changes me as a musician also and makes me better.”
– Sofya Tsygankova, the estranged wife of famed Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko, has been declared unfit to stand trial for the murder of the couple's two young daughters earlier this year. NBC reports that a Texas judge has ordered the 32-year-old to spend 120 days in a mental health facility so she can regain "a reasonable degree of rational understanding." Her defense attorney says several doctors who evaluated Tsygankova decided she wasn't mentally competent enough for a trial, and prosecutors did not object. She faces two charges of capital murder of a person under age 10. Tsygankova, who will remain in the Tarrant County Jail until a bed in a mental health facility becomes available, is accused of smothering 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michaela Kholodenko on March 17 in their home in a Fort Worth suburb. Her husband, who filed for divorce months before the deaths, told police he arrived at the home to find the girls dead and Tsygankova in an "extreme state of distress" with cuts to her wrists. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that according to court documents, Tsygankova visited a mental health facility in Fort Worth the day before the killings. (The tragedy renewed talk of a "Cliburn curse.")