Alena Baeva is a Russian violinist. She was born in Osh, in the Kyrgyz SSR of the Soviet Union, into a family of musicians. Having demonstrated an excellent memory and an ability to reproduce melodies accurately after hearing them once, she entered the Prokofiev Music School in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the age of five, studying violin with Olga Danilova.
In 1994, Baeva was noticed by the Russian professor Eduard Grach. At his invitation, she moved with her family to Moscow in 1995 and studied at the Central Music School attached to the Tchaikovsky Conservatory until graduating in 2002. She won the International Youth Violin Competition in Kloster Schöntal at the age of twelve, followed by the 12th Tadeusz Wronski International Violin Competition in Warsaw at fourteen, where she was the youngest participant. In 2001, while in the tenth grade, she won first prize, a gold medal, and nine special prizes at the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznań, Poland.
In 2003, at the invitation of Mstislav Rostropovich and with support from the Rostropovich Foundation, she undertook training in Paris, studying with Professor Boris Garlitsky. She graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 2007, in Eduard Grach's class. Between 2001 and 2006, she also attended Keshet Eilon masterclasses in Israel under Shlomo Mintz, and studied there with Ida Haendel and Itamar Golan; she also attended lessons given by Ivry Gitlis.
Baeva won the Second Moscow International Paganini Competition in 2004, receiving the right to play for one year on a Stradivarius violin that had belonged to Henryk Wieniawski. In 2007, she won first prize and the audience prize at the Sendai International Competition in Japan. That year she also received the Triumph Youth Prize.
In 2006, she first performed Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with Yuri Bashmet, beginning a continuing collaboration that included chamber music and Benjamin Britten's Double Concerto. Since 1995, she has appeared at international music festivals in Tours, France, and elsewhere, including Stars of the White Nights and La Folle Journée in Nantes. She has taken part in the annual Crescendo International Music Festival since 2006, and in 2011 she toured as a soloist with the I, CULTURE Orchestra.