Radio 3 - New Generation Artists

Khatia Buniatishvili (2009-2011)

Khatia Buniatishvili - piano

Biography

Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili was born on 21 June 1987 in Tbilisi. She and her older sister Gvantsa were introduced to the piano at an early age by their mother, an enthusiastic music lover. Playing four-handed is still one of the favourite activities for the sisters.

Khatia's extraordinary talent was recognised when she was very young; at the age of six she gave her debut performance as soloist with an orchestra. She was subsequently invited to foreign guest performances in Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Russia, Israel and the USA.

Khatia does not like to be seen as a child prodigy; virtuosity for its own sake does not appeal to her. Above all, she embraces the pianists of previous generations: Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sviatoslav Richter and Glenn Gould. She admires her "favourite pianist" Martha Argerich for her uniqueness and therefore does not view her as somebody she should try to emulate. Khatia sees herself as "completely a person of the 20th century", and does not identify so strongly with contemporary pianists.

The warm, sometimes sorrowful playing by Khatia may reflect a close proximity to Georgian folk music. In fact, Khatia attests that it has influenced her musicality greatly. Critics emphasise that her playing has an aura of elegant solitude and even melancholy, which Buniatishvili does not feel to be a negative attribute. "The piano is the blackest instrument," she says. A "symbol of musical solitude," to which even a pianist must become accustomed.
"I have to be psychologically strong and forget the hall if I want to share it with the audience."

During her studies at the Tbilisi State Conservatory, she 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. This is where she has lived and studied since 2007. 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.

Orchestra invitations have taken her to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 2; Mozart, Piano Concerto K. 491), the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra (Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1) and - within the scope of a European tour - to the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 2).

In October 2009, Khatia will give the first public performance of a newly discovered double concerto by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy together with Gidon Kremer at the Vienna Music Society. Guest performances at the festival in Lockenhaus in 2009 will be followed by appearances at the Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano and the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival (under the direction of Elena Bashkirova).

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