Elena Bashkirova

Elena Bashkirova was born in 1958 in Moscow

Bashkirova was born in Moscow in 1958 into a musical family. Her father was the pianist and teacher Dmitri Bashkirov. At 15 she began formal study in his class at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

In 1978 she left the Soviet Union with violinist Gidon Kremer, her duo partner and husband, and settled in Paris. She performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Chamber music and accompanying singers became a central part of her work.

In 1998 she founded the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival and has served as its artistic director. In 2012 she set up Intonations, a sister festival in Berlin. She also founded the Metropolis Ensemble in Berlin.

Her recording of Tchaikovsky's The Seasons and Album for the Young won a 2017 ICMA award. In 2018 she received the Ruhr Piano Festival Prize and an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University. In 2020 she became president of the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig, succeeding Kurt Masur.

In 1988 she married pianist Daniel Barenboim, becoming his second wife. They have 2 sons who both work in music.