Elisabeth Leonskaja is a noted Georgian pianist and teacher. She was born on November 23, 1945 to a Russian family living in Tbilisi, then the capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.
She gave her first concert at the age of eleven. In 1964 she began studies in the Moscow Conservatory. During her conservatory years she won prizes in the prestigious Enescu, Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud and Queen Elizabeth international piano competitions in Bucharest, Paris and Brussels.
She left the Soviet Union in 1978 and has since then lived in Vienna. A notable recording of hers is of Edvard Grieg's piano transcriptions of Mozart's piano sonatas K. 545 and k. 533, accompanied by Sviatoslav Richter, with whom she built a close friendship and collaboration. She was a member of the piano faculty at the Vienna Conservatory where she has taught several notable performers including Markus Hinterhäuser.