Quite simply a titan of the keyboard, Elizabeth Leonskaja is one of the most widely respected pianists performing today. She comes from an eminent lineage of Soviet players and, early in her career, famously performed regularly alongside her legendary colleague, Sviatoslav Richter. Her performances are steeped in decades of thought and experience. They glow with authority and integrity, yet Leonskaja also brings the thrill of rediscovery to her concerts, finding fresh new perspectives on even much-loved music – and often challenging preconceptions in the process.

She begins her International Festival recital with Schubert’s gently lyrical Allegretto in E flat, though menace and drama are never far from its calm surface. Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces are remarkable miniatures of intensely concentrated expression.

Leonskaja concludes with Brahms’s expansive, ambitious Third Piano Sonata, inspired by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and written on an almost symphonic scale. Set across five substantial movements, it bursts with melody and swelling emotion, from the pensive to the boisterous to a dazzlingly bravura finale, just the music to highlight the remarkable insights of Leonskaja’s perceptive artistry.

Supported by Dunard Fund