Saturday, June 15, 2019

Elisabeth Leonskaja

Elisabeth Leonskaja (1945) is a Soviet and Austrian pianist. She was born to a family of Jewish and Polish origin, living in Tbilisi, then the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.
When Leonskaja was six and a half, her parents were able to buy her her first upright piano. At 11, she gave her orchestral debut with Beethoven's Piano Concerto in C Major (Op. 15), at 13 her first solo recital. 
In 1964, Leonskaja began studies in the Moscow Conservatory. 
Leonskaja left the Soviet Union in 1978 and has since then resided in Vienna. A notable recording of hers is of Edvard Grieg's piano transcriptions of Mozart's piano sonatas K. 545 and K. 533/494, accompanied by Sviatoslav Richter, with whom she built a close friendship and collaboration. 

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