A native of Saint Petersburg, British-German cellist Leonid Gorokhov began playing piano at the age of five and the cello at seven. He attended the Central Music School to study with Svjatoslav Zagursky, continued at that the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Anatoly Nikitin and took part in masterclasses with Daniil Shafran. Winner of Concertino Praga (First Prize) and Paris Chamber Music Competition (Premier Grand Prix), Leonid Gorokhov is the only Russian cellist who received the Grand Prix and the First Prize at the Geneva Contest (1986). In 1995, the European Association for Encouragement of the Arts awarded him the Cultural Achievement Prize for “exceptional talent and outstanding artistic accomplishment”. Leonid Gorokhov is professor at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. Composition was for him a strictly private subject until recently, when the support and interest of friends and colleagues made a number of his pieces available to the audience.
