Alexandra Psareva

Alexandra Psareva was born in St. Petersburg in 1975 and received her first violin lessons at the age of five. Following early musical successes, concert tours with violin ensembles, and awards at youth competitions, she continued her studies with Professor Sergey Zakurin in St. Petersburg from 1990 to 1994. From 1995 to 2001, she studied at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre with Professor Andreas Röhn.

Among other distinctions, she received Second Prize at the “Young Virtuosos” Competition in St.Petersburg and First Prize at the Elise Meyer Competition in Hamburg in 2000. From 1997 to 2000, she served as first violinist and leader of the Hamburg Chamber Ensemble.

Since 2001, Alexandra Psareva has been a member of the first violin section of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (formerly the NDR Symphony Orchestra). Since 2012, she has held the position of Associate Concertmaster. In addition, she was a member of the orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival in 2002 and regularly appears as guest concertmaster with renowned symphony orchestras.

As principal concertmaster, she has participated in various opera and orchestral productions, including Porgy and Bess with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, as well as Maria Stuarda and Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Hamburg State Opera. With the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, she also served in this role for La clemenza di Tito.

Since the founding of the Academy of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in 2012, Alexandra Psareva has devoted herself intensively to pedagogical work. She teaches and mentors the academy’s violin fellows, accompanies them in concerts, and prepares them specifically for orchestral auditions and professional appointments. In September 2025, she served as a lecturer at the International Mendelssohn Festival & Summer School of the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, where she led daily violin masterclasses and worked with international students and emerging musicians at university level.

The focus of her artistic and pedagogical work lies in a physically grounded methodology that understands movement and sound as interconnected physical processes. Violin playing is not taught through isolated finger or arm movements, but rather developed from impulses originating in the body’s center. These impulses are received, carried forward, and intentionally redirected, rather than interrupted or artificially “produced”.

In her teaching, Alexandra Psareva draws parallels to movement practices and sports such as Tai Chi, Qigong, tennis, and swimming, working with principles such as weight transfer, balance, coordination, and kinetic energy. The goal is an economical, organic playing style and a sustainable integration of technique, sound, and interpretation.

In October 2025, she also led a violin masterclass at the Central Conservatory of Music. Her teaching there took place in an international higher-education context with a focus on her own methodology.

A special emphasis of her artistic work is chamber music. Since 2013, Alexandra Psareva has been a member of a permanent string quartet formation that has become established under the name Noah Quartett. The ensemble performs in renowned chamber music series and is represented by the artist agency Rolf Sudbrack.

Her chamber music partners have included Alan Gilbert, Antoine Tamestit, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Alexander Zemtsov, and Szymon Marciniak, among others.