Leon Fleisher

Leon Fleisher (1928-2020) was an American classical pianist, conductor, and teacher from San Francisco. He studied with Artur Schnabel from age nine and made his concerto debut at sixteen with the New York Philharmonic, going on to record some of the most celebrated versions of the Beethoven and Brahms concertos with conductor George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In the mid-1960s he developed focal dystonia, a neurological condition that left him unable to use his right hand for about thirty years, before he eventually regained two-handed playing late in his career.