Alena Baeva

Alena Baeva is fast emerging as one of the finest violinists of her generation – having already carved out an impressive career to date working regularly as a soloist with orchestras including the Mariinsky Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the Svetlanov Academic Symphony Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, German Radio Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium. Alena has worked with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir Neville Marriner, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Paavo Berglund, Kazuki Yamada, Sakari Oramo, and Pablo Heras-Casado. Her chamber music partners have included Marta Argerich, Yuri Bashmet, Steven Isserlis, Nikolai Lugansky, Misha Maisky, Аlexander Knyazev, Vadym Kholodenko (with whom she has established an 8-year long musical partnership), and Itamar Golan.

Recent highlights include the opening violin recital at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, performing with Yuri Bashmet and the English Chamber Orchestra in London’s Cadogan Hall, a tour with Orchestre National de Lille under Jean Claude Casadesus, engagements with the Trondheim Soloists, and a performance at Klassik Open Air, with an audience of over 75,000 people. Alena recently performed with the Weimar Staatskapelle (and conductor Stefan Solyom), the Luzern Festival Strings Orchestra, as well as Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.2 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris (February 2014), and the complete cycle of Shostakovich’s symphonies and instrumental concertos - performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev. Future engagements include performing with the Belgrade and Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestras, Orchestre National de Lille, Brussels Philharmonic, a return to the English Chamber Orchestra, along with recitals and chamber music throughout Europe.

Alena Baeva was born in 1985 to a musical family. At the age of five she began studying the violin in Alma-Ata under Olga Danilova. From 1995 she was a student with Professor Eduard Grach at the Central School of Music of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire and from 2002-2007 at the Moscow Conservatoire itself. Apart from formal studies, her two most important influencers and supporters were Mstislav Rostropovich and Seiji Ozawa. In 2003 she was invited by Rostropovich to study in France and since 2007, Ms. Baeva has participated in Seiji Ozawa’s Academy in Switzerland. She has taken part in various master-classes, including those under Ida Haendel, Maxim Vengerov, Shlomo Mintz, and Boris Garlitsky. In 2004 Alena Baeva won the Grand Prix at the Moscow International Niccolò Paganini Competition, giving her the right to perform on the Stradivarius violin that belonged to Henryk Wieniawski; she also took the Gold Medal and audience prize at the International Violin Competition in Sendai (2007).

Alena’s discography includes recordings of concerti by Bruch and Shostakovich with the Russian National Orchestra (Pentatone Classics), concerti by Szymanowski (DUX), sonatas by Poulenc, Prokofiev and Debussy (SIMC), and Schubert’s Erlkönig with Yuri Bashmet (Sony Classics). The most recent release is a live-recording of the Second Violin Concerto by Shostakovish with Valery Gergiev (Arthaus Music, 2015). She also has a diverse range of recordings made on radio and television in Belgium, Germany, Israel, Poland, Japan, Portugal, Russia and the USA. Her rapidly expanding repertoire includes over forty violin concerti and numerous sonatas and other works from different eras.