Florian Leonhard

Florian Leonhard has dedicated his life to studying, restoring and making violins. After Mittenwald Violin Making School he worked for W.E. Hill and Sons becoming Head Restorer. Today Florian Leonhard Fine Violins has ateliers in Europe, America and Asia. As a leading authority on the assessment of Italian masterpieces, he advises orchestras, institutions and world-renowned violin soloists including Alina Ibragimova, Leonidas Kavakos, Anne Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov, and cellists such as Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Julian Lloyd-Webber and Steven Isserlis. Informed by 40 years of research, the Florian Leonhard ‘True Copy’ instruments are sought after for acoustic and visual likeness to the originals. He has contributed to numerous articles and publications such as volumes on Vuillaume and Stradivari, and The Strad and Archi periodicals, as well as publishing two comprehensive books on Italian instrument-making: The Makers of Central Italy and The Makers of Tuscany. Florian often appears on jury panels for international competitions for both violinmaking and playing, including the Violinwettbewerb Kloster Schöntal and Nemessányi in 2022.