Elisabeth Leonskaja

Born in Tbilisi in 1945 and trained at the Moscow Conservatory, Elisabeth Leonskaja won prizes at the Enescu competition in 1964, Long-Thibaud in 1965 and Queen Elisabeth in 1968, and played duets with Sviatoslav Richter. She left the Soviet Union in 1978 and has lived in Vienna since. She has recorded the complete Schubert sonatas; her repertoire also includes Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the New York Philharmonic and the London orchestras have all engaged her, she has recorded for eaSonus and Warner Classics, and Austria has given her its Cross of Honour for Science and Art. She gave her first concerts at eleven, and she appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 1979; the partnership with Richter lasted until his death in 1997. Chamber playing has brought her together with the Belcea, Borodin, Artemis and Jerusalem quartets and, on record, with the Alban Berg Quartet, and she recorded the Tchaikovsky concertos with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. The Austrian Cross of Honour came in 2006, Georgia named her a Priestess of Art in 2016, and in 2020 she received an Opus Klassik and the lifetime achievement award of the International Classical Music Awards. She received the Wigmore Hall Medal in September 2024.