How Violinist Alena Baeva Found a New Approach to Beethoven

By Inge Kjemtrup | From the March/April 2026 issue of Strings

Beethoven is a monument. A deity to be worshipped. An intimidating genius who glowers at the viewer from every one of his portraits. At least, that’s how many people see him. But there are those who challenge the unexamined veneration, instead offering revelations, encouraging musicians and audiences alike to take a fresh look at the composer and his music.

Alena Baeva found herself reconsidering Beethoven a few months before she and pianist Vadym Kholodenko were due to record three of his piano-violin sonatas. The bolt from the blue stemmed from their study of the 2020 Bärenreiter edition of the sonatas, which includes an urtext part, a part with performing annotations, and some 200 pages of commentary on performing practice from musicologist Clive Brown and his pianist colleague Neal Peres Da Costa.

Baeva found Brown’s commentary inspirational because of what it told her about performing traditions in Beethoven’s day: “It’s more about speaking; it’s more about sending a message. Of course, you cannot change your manner of playing in two or three months, but we did what we could. I could not sleep, I was so inspired. I was reading it and [thinking], ‘Ah, look at that—so beautiful.’”

Even with the limitations of a Zoom interview, I could sense Baeva’s intense excitement and engagement with Brown’s iconoclastic ideas. Her embrace of the new might seem surprising based on a superficial glance at Baeva’s résumé, which suggests a violinist who is a product of the Russian School of playing. Her career and her performances, however, transcend the stereotype.

She was born in 1985 in a village in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, where her grandfather was working as a geologist, and where her mother taught piano and her father played double bass. Baeva was five when the family was uprooted to Kazakhstan. Music was always important. “My father told me that he would put on the [Pablo] Casals Bach Cello Suites record and that would be the only thing that would soothe me.”

She started playing the violin not long after arriving in Kazakhstan. Why the violin? The discovery that she had perfect pitch destined her for the instrument, she explains. She studied with Olga Danilova, a noted teacher of young students. The violin came easily to Baeva. “As I child, I was very active! I loved to run, I was very quick, and I guess I really enjoyed the pace of progress.”

Her talents brought her to Moscow where, at age ten, she was the youngest pupil in the class of professor Eduard Grach at the Central School of Music and the State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. Grach had studied with Pyotr Stolyarsky and Abram Yampolsky, and, says Baeva, “wanted every one of his students to develop his or her individuality. He has quite a few students who are very different and curious, which I think is the sign of successful upbringing as a musician.”

Lessons with Grach were long and sometimes terrifying. “He could be quite harsh sometimes. He would say something like, ‘You didn’t work enough. This is very bad. You have to just go home and practice it.’” Baeva responded well to Grach’s emphasis on expressiveness, less well to other aspects of his teaching. “I think he had a hard time with me because I was really not convinced by everything he would say. I was willing to try some other ways.”

As a teen, Baeva escaped Moscow in the summers to attend the Keshet Eilon violin master courses in Israel. It was a vibrant atmosphere, with 50 other young musicians. She remembers lessons with Ida Haendel and with Shlomo Mintz, who insisted on close study of the scores. 

Another influence was Mstislav Rostropovich, who directed her to Paris, where she had lessons with Boris Garlitsky. She credits him with developing her “understanding of Classical and early Romantic music.” Lessons with Rostropovich himself were daunting. “He was always demanding more than I could do at that moment,” though his focus was always on the quality of sound. Baeva recalls of the great cellist that “he was just radiant and giving so much energy to everyone around him in a ten-meter radius!”

Baeva took competitions in her stride and did not suffer overmuch from nerves: “I really liked to perform!” At 16 she won the grand prize and a host of other prizes at the Wieniawski Competition. She was awarded the Grand Prix at the Moscow International Niccolò Paganini Competition in 2004 and both the gold medal and the audience prize at the Sendai International Violin Competition in 2007.

Thanks in part to competitions, she developed an interest in modern and contemporary repertoire. Polish composers—Krzysztof Penderecki, Grażyna Bacewicz, Mieczysław Karłowicz—have figured prominently on her music stand. She’s visited Poland often: “It is such a rich land with musical geniuses,” she says. Music by British composers Thomas Adès and Alex Paxton also figure into her plans.

This year marks 20 years of musical partnership with Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko, who along the way became her husband. “The first piece we ever played was Beethoven’s Sonata No. 10. I had no idea how to play Beethoven. But he suggested this would be a nice piece of music!”

Their solo careers developed separately after they left school. Kholodenko won the gold medal at the 2013 Van Cliburn Competition; Baeva recorded and concertized throughout the world. She is artist in residence at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in England, where a recent performance of the Berg Concerto received high critical praise. According to Bachtrack: “She may not yet be a household name in the UK, but in this captivating account Baeva showcased technical prowess and expressive phrasing, whilst also projecting a sweetness of tone that soared over the formidably complex orchestral writing.” 

Before turning their attention to the Beethoven sonatas, Baeva and Kholodenko had just recorded a recital album, Fantasy, for Alpha Classics. For this first Beethoven set, they chose three early sonatas: Op. 12, No. 3; Op. 24, “Spring”; and Op. 47, “Kreutzer.” Exploring the sonatas with the Bärenreiter edition and Clive Brown’s commentary was a memorable experience.

The first dedicatee of the “Kreutzer” sonata was the virtuoso violinist George Bridgetower, whose inventive and brilliant playing was admired by Beethoven. As composer and violinist read through the sonata, Bridgetower imitated a piano passage at a point where a fermata was written in his part. “He just improvised this, answering the piano,” marvels Baeva. “Beethoven stopped playing and gave him a hug. But this [improvisation] was never written in the score.” It was expected, however, that the violinist would play this, and Baeva does in the recording.

Baeva was also intrigued that Brown’s copious research confirmed that it was standard practice that “when you repeat something, a section, you don’t play it the same way a second time.” Brown provides extended notes on the playing style of ten historic violinists, including Ferdinand David, Joseph Joachim, Fritz Kreisler, and Leopold Auer.

For this recording, Baeva put gut D and G strings on her violin, the ​“ex-William Kroll” Guarneri del Gesù of 1738 (loaned by an anonymous patron through J & A Beare). She used an early (ca. 1800) Tourte bow, a transitional model made as the modern bow developed from the Classical.

Playing with the Tourte aided Baeva in finding an appropriate bowing style. For passages that today are often played with spiccato, she instead played martelé in the upper half of the bow. “This is a totally different technique, which also gives you the possibility of shaping every note to your liking. You know, it’s much more flexible. You can do so many more things than just jumping at the frog!”

Baeva has learned to limit what she calls “automatic automated vibrato.” She explains, “The point of vibrato is to add color, to add expression. There are 100 kinds of vibrato! There is no reason to vibrate on a high note just because it’s high.” But a dolce or espressivo section, for example, might need a tender vibrato to highlight something special.

“For me, when you approach different periods of music, it’s not how you do it, but it’s very important what you are actually willing to say with the music. We all hear music differently, and that is the beauty in it.”