Elena Bashkirova studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with her father, the celebrated pianist and teacher, Dmitri Bashkirov. She has performed with such orchestras as Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, IPO and Chicago Symphony under conductors including Celibidache, Boulez, Mehta, Dohnányi and Eschenbach. She is an advocate of twentieth-century music and has performed several world premieres. In 1998, Bashkirova founded the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival of which she is Artistic Director, together with its partner festival at the Kühlhaus, Berlin. In 2017 her recording of two Tchaikovsky cycles received the ICMA ‘solo instrument’ award and in 2018 she received the Ruhr Piano Festival Prize and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her recording of Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures was released in 2020. She is President of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig.

Photo Nikolaj Lund