Elene Bashkirova

Elena Bashkirova has been honorary president of the Felix-Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Stiftung foundation since 2020, succeeding Kurt Masur. She graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of her father, Dmitri Bashkirov. She received important inspiration from artists such as Pierre Boulez, Sergiu Celibidache, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Michael Gielen. She has been working together for many years with, among others, Lawrence Foster, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Ivor Bolton, Manfred Honeck, and Antonello Manacorda. In addition to performances as a soloist with orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, chamber music plays an important role in her work. She regularly works with singers such as Matthias Goerne, René Pape, Robert Holl, Dorothea Röschmann, and Anna Netrebko. In 1998, she founded the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, which she has shaped as artistic director ever since. The Jewish Museum Berlin has hosted its sister festival Intonation every year since 2012. Elena Bashkirova has given guest performances worldwide with the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival Ensemble and has appeared at festivals in Lucerne, Verbier, in the Rheingau, as well as at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn and the “Klavier-Festival Ruhr” piano festival.