Elisabeth Leonskaja review piano legend's unerring sense of architecture reveals connections and kinships

"The Austrian pianist's expressive, emotional playing may grab the headlines, but it's the unerring sense of underlying architecture that's the thread through her long career. We heard that here, not just within each of the works, but in the shared foundations, and sometimes secret connecting passages, she revealed between them."

"Leonskaja darted in and out of the truncated utterances and half-thoughts, the thematic dead ends and fancies that open Beethoven's Fantasia. These, she suggested, were the true heart of the piece, not the dutiful variations that later see the music knuckle down to business."

"When those chromatic scales returned it was like a punchline: music we thought had finally been brought to heel throwing up its head to reveal its still-wild, unbroken spirit."

Elisabeth Leonskaja, an eighty-year-old Austrian piano legend, performed a recital featuring works by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern, and Schubert. Her programming, though appearing eclectic, revealed deliberate structural connections between pieces. Leonskaja's expressive, emotional playing is complemented by her keen sense of underlying musical architecture. She emphasized the fragmentary, exploratory nature of Beethoven's Op 77 Fantasia, finding its true heart in truncated utterances rather than formal variations. Her interpretation of Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces demonstrated unexpected lyricism, creating surprising parallels with Chopin's works. Throughout the recital, Leonskaja revealed shared foundations and secret connecting passages between seemingly disparate compositions, showcasing her sophisticated understanding of musical relationships.

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