For decades, Elisabeth Leonskaja has been one of the most celebrated pianists of our time. Born in Tbilissi, she left the Soviet Union for Austria in 1978 and celebrated the start of her great career with an acclaimed concert at the Salzburg Festival. Since then, she has performed worldwide as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors and has given solo recitals in all of Europe’s major concert halls. She has enjoyed a close artistic relationship with The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen for many years.

Leonskaja’s early musical development was particularly influenced by her collaboration with her mentor Sviatoslav Richter, with whom she remained friends until his death in 1997. She also enjoyed a long-standing musical friendship with the Alban Berg Quartet. Their joint recordings are considered iconic. In addition to the numerous awards she has received for her extensive discography, this pianist was honoured with the International Classical Music Award (ICMA) for her life’s work in 2020. More recently, she received the Wigmore Hall Medal in London in 2024.  Her latest solo album is dedicated to the Second Viennese School. In 2025, she released Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, ›Emperor‹.

Sarah Christian’s wish is to convey the honest emotion and energy of classical music to her listeners. In her artistic life, she enjoys combining all influences, not having to compromise anything in her many roles as soloist, chamber musician, the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen’s concert master or as Artistic Director of a chamber music series in her home town of Augsburg. Here she makes the highest demands on herself. Her focus, when studying scores, is always on the music itself, which she approaches with the greatest respect. Her most important teacher is Antje Weithaas, with whom she studied at the Hanns Eisler Music College in Berlin and whose assistant she later became. As professor, Sarah Christian supervises her own class at the Stuttgart College of Music and Performing Arts.

One of her greatest competition success is the ARD Music Competition 2017, at which she won 2nd Prize (no 1st prize was awarded). She also won the audience prize and the Munich Chamber Orchestra’s special prize. Sarah Christian has performed in many European countries, as well as in China, Japan, South America and The United States. As soloist, she has played with orchestras such as the Camerata Salzburg, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Auckland Philharmonia. She gave her debut at Carnegie Hall with the Bavarian State Orchestra in March 2018. Her Debut CD (GENUIN, 2017), featuring Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1 in F minor Op. 80 and Schubert’s C Major Fantasy has been greatly praised by the press »Sarah Christian’s solo debut is simply fantastic! This violinist has proven to be an extremely sensitive interpreter and she is technically quite simply unimpeachable.« (klassik.com).