’Legendary’ is a term to keep in strict reserve,” wrote the Observer in September 2022, when Elisabeth Leonskaja appeared at London’s Wigmore Hall. “It can be used categorically for the Soviet-born Austrian pianist … a septuagenarian with the energy and agility of a player half her age and the wisdom of ages in her playing … Leonskaja has a radiance in her presence, yet the muscularity and vigour of her playing has the power to shock.”

Leonskaja’s recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos 3 and 4, with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse under its former music director Tugan Sokhiev, have their origins in the 2017-18 concert season in Toulouse. At the time, Bachtrack designated Leonskaja as a ‘guiding spirit’ for music-making in the city.

“When I'm playing with an orchestra, I must get the orchestra's pulse,” Leonskaja has said. “I cannot change the pulsation of the ensemble. When I'm playing in a recital, the musical time, the contemplation, belongs only to me: it's my tempo, it's my pulse, and it's my rhythm. The orchestra is, however, a huge entity, a living thing, which has the right to exist in its rhythm, in its pulse.”

Her pre-eminence in Beethoven (in this case the A flat major sonata op 110) was eagerly acknowledged by the Guardian in a five-star review of a recital in August 2022: “Leonskaja’s ability to produce the most powerful sound and allow it to resonate fully suggested an artist fully conscious of the privilege of giving aural expression to what the stone-deaf Beethoven had heard only in his extraordinary imagination … [She deployed] a palette of tone-colours from gently muted to vibrant, and a similarly commanding dynamic range. Clarity of delineation and ease in every phrase allowed the structure to unfold organically … Here was innate pianism, with musical sensibilities and a daring honed by a lifetime of experience. She was cheered to the rafters.”

Her Warner Classics recording of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, released in early 2022, aroused similar enthusiasm … “There’s no question that we’re in the presence of a pianist of true stature,” wrote Gramophone, while BBC Music Magazine’s response was even more conclusive: “Perfection? For me, it’s a yes.”

5 November 2021 - Renewing and cementing a relationship that dates back to the 1980s, Warner Classics has signed an exclusive contract with the distinguished pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja.

Born in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and trained at the Moscow Conservatory, Elisabeth Leonskaja has been based in Vienna since 1978 and enjoys special renown as an interpreter of the Classical and Romantic Austro-German repertoire.

Her first recording under the new contract is Mozart’s Complete Piano Sonatas, a 6CD box to be released in February 2022. It will join her existing Warner Classics catalogue, which includes music by Brahms, Chopin, Dvořák, Liszt, Schubert, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, and an album, recorded in 1995 with her mentor Sviatoslav Richter, of Grieg’s arrangements for two pianos of selected Mozart sonatas. Her discography, which ranges from solo works to concertos (notably with Kurt Masur as conductor), also bears witness to her close collaboration in chamber music with the Alban Berg Quartett, Borodin Quartet and Artemis Quartet.

The French magazine Diapason has written that: "Elisabeth Leonskaja’s journey leads from one peak to another. By constantly excelling herself, driven by her own personal demands, by her passion and her intelligence, she has earned a place among the greatest, not just of today, but of the past …” Winner of Germany’s prestigious Opus Klassik Award in 2020, she is admired as an interpreter who respects the truth of the music. As Leonskaja herself has said: “When I play, I am not presenting myself on the stage, but the music I am playing. It is the music that matters.”

The integrity of her approach, and her seemingly innate understanding of the music she plays, stands her in good stead as an interpreter of Mozart’s 18 piano sonatas – ‘essential’ works of the Viennese keyboard repertoire. Mozart composed them in various locations around Europe between the mid-1770s, when he was in his late teens, and 1789, two years before his death. Any pianist who interprets them needs to be an exponent of the proverbial art that conceals art. Famously, the great Viennese-trained pianist Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) felt that: “The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.” As so often with Mozart, the surface of the sonatas appears comparatively simple, but beneath it lies a highly sophisticated structure and considerable expressive substance. In the words of Edwin Fischer, another major pianist of the first half of the 20th century: “One should experience [Mozart’s] music with imagination and feeling … Mozart is not sweetness or artistry, Mozart is the touchstone of the heart.”

Commenting on Elisabeth Leonskaja’s renewed presence on the Warner Classics label, Bertrand Castellani, VP A&R Warner Classics & Erato, says:

“It is a joy and an honour for Warner Classics to welcome back the legendary Elisabeth Leonskaja, who has made so many revered recordings for the label in the past. Not only is she one of the greatest pianists of our time, but she is also a link to the Russian school that has played such an important role in the history of the piano. With her recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, she has reached a new discographic landmark. Her Warner Classics catalogue will also now be enriched by the recent recordings that she made for the label eaSonus, notably an outstanding complete cycle of the complete Schubert piano sonatas.”