Elena Denisova (full name Elena Borisovna Denisova; born 14 February 1963, Moscow) is an Austrian violinist. She graduated from the Central Music School at the Moscow State Conservatory in 1980 and from the Moscow State Conservatory in 1985, where she studied with Vladimir Klimov; she also took lessons from Oleg Kagan.
In 1985 Denisova received third prize at the Vaclav Huml International Violin Competition in Zagreb, followed by third prize at the International Competition for Instrumental Musicians in Markneukirchen in 1987. From 1985 to 1989 she was a soloist with the Moscow State Philharmonic, and from 1990 to 1993 she served as concertmaster of the first violins in the orchestra of the Klagenfurt Municipal Theatre. She became an Austrian citizen in 1992 and lives in Vienna.
Denisova has performed at major European venues including Vienna's Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie, Salzburg's Great Festival Hall, and Flemish Radio and Television in Brussels. Her repertoire and recordings encompass Baroque music by Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach, Classical and Romantic works by Joseph Haydn, Ivan Khandoshkin, and Max Reger, as well as music by contemporary Austrian composers including Nikolaus Fheodoroff, Gerhard Neumann, Dieter Kaufmann, Wolfgang Danzmayr, and Gabriele Proy.
She gave first performances and made recordings of several works by Mikhail Kollontai, including his Partita-Testament for solo violin, dedicated to her and recorded in 2000, and Agnus Dei for violin and orchestra, recorded in 2012. Her discography comprises more than 25 albums. A notable 2008 recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons used a different historic instrument for each concerto: two separate Stradivari violins, a Guarneri violin, and a Ruggeri violin.
Denisova has appeared at such international festivals as Carinthian Summer in Ossiach, the Flemish Festival, Hörgang, KlangBogen, the Ljubljana Festival, Russian Winter in Moscow, the Spring Concerts in Parma, the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, and the St. Gellert Festival in Szeged. In 1992 she and her husband, conductor and pianist Alexei Kornienko, founded the Collegium Musicum Carinthia string chamber orchestra. At her initiative, the Gustav Mahler Austrian Music Society was established in 1995; under its auspices, she and Kornienko organized the Gustav Mahler Ensemble. She has chaired the Vienna music association Classics etcetera since 2001 and has been president of the Wörthersee Classics festival in Klagenfurt since 2002.
In 2025 Denisova's 25-minute independent short film The Violinist, directed by Elena Boldina, was released. The film is a monologue on a musician's inner world, the nature of creativity, and the values of art; Denisova plays its sole leading role. It was filmed in Kirov at Mikhail Mamonov's studio.