Elisabeth Leonskaya is a Soviet and Austrian pianist and music teacher. She was born on November 23, 1945, in Tbilisi, into a family of Polish and Russian origin on her father's side and Jewish origin on her mother's side. Her parents were evacuated to Tbilisi from Odesa at the beginning of the war. She gave her first concert with an orchestra at the age of eleven and her first solo recital at thirteen.
In 1964 she entered the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied in the class of Yakov Milstein. While still a student, she won several prizes at major international competitions, including the George Enescu Competition in Bucharest in 1964, the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris in 1965, and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1968.
During these years she performed Mozart sonatas in Edvard Grieg's arrangement for two pianos with Sviatoslav Richter, who had a decisive influence on her development as a pianist. Her repertoire includes music by European Romantics as well as Russian composers such as Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich.
On November 29, 1978, while on tour in Vienna, she announced that she had decided not to return to the Soviet Union. According to other accounts, the documents for her departure had been prepared in advance, although within a very short time. She later settled in Vienna, where she lives, performs in concert, and teaches.
Leonskaya has appeared with major European orchestras and chamber ensembles and has worked with leading conductors from Europe and the United States, most often with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. Among her students are Kaspar Frantz, Anika Vavic, and Markus Hinterhauser.
In June 1986, while in France, she met Joseph Brodsky, who later dedicated two poems to her: Bagatelle (1987), included in the book Urania, and In the air there is bitter frost and pine needles... (1994). According to Leonskaya, she was one of the last of Brodsky's friends to see him alive, the day before his death. With her support, two books of poems by Marina Georgadze were published: Route in 1996 and In Black on White in 2002.
Her honors include the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class, awarded in 2006; the rank of Officer of the Order of Cultural Merit in the category B, Music, awarded in Romania in 2009; the Saint Cecilia Prize for a recording of Brahms sonatas; and the Diapason d'Or for a recording of works by Franz Liszt.
From 1968 she was married to the violinist Oleg Kagan. In November 2025, her concert in the Netherlands scheduled for December 4 was canceled because of her performance in the Russian Federation.