Khatia was born on 21 June 1987 in Tbilisi, Georgia. She was introduced to the piano by her mother, and her talent was soon recognized when and she made her orchestral debutat the age of six. She was subsequently invited to foreign guest performances in Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Russia, Israel and the USA.
Khatia Buniatishvili won the special prize of the Horowitz Piano Competition in Kiev in 2003 and the first prize of the Elizabeth Leonskaya Scholarship. At the 2003 Piano Competition in Tbilisi, she became acquainted with Oleg Maisenberg, who convinced her to transfer to Vienna’s Academy for Music and the Performing Arts. At the 12th Arthur Rubinstein Competition in 2008, she won the third prize and was distinguished as the Best Performer of a Chopin Piece and the Audience Favourite.
She has appeared at many prestigious festivals including Verbier Festival, Progetto Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer's Internationales Kammermusikfest Lockenhaus, Gstaad Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron Festival, Saratoga Festival, Verbier Festival as well as performing with the Israel Philharmonic, the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philhadelphia Orchestra and Larry Foster, the NDR Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Andrey Boreyko and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Paavo Järvi. In 2008 she made her US performing debut at Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall) with the Chopin Piano Concerto No 2. The following year she performed the Mendelssohn Double Concerto with Gidon Kremer at the Musikverein Vienna and toured with him and the Kremerata Baltica to Milan (La Scala), Rome, Pavia and Istanbul. Upcoming engagements will see her perform with the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Verbier Festival Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, the Orchestre de Paris with Paavo Järvi and the San Francisco Symphony with Jaap van Zweden. She has given critically-acclaimed solo recitals and chamber music concerts in halls including the Wigmore Hall in London, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Musikverein Vienna.
She is a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist 2009-2011 and as such has regularly collaborated with BBC orchestras. She received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award 2010 and the same year she signed an exclusive contract with Sony. Her first recording is devoted to Liszt. She was nominated as an ECHO Rising Star by the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Musikverein Wien.
