Lisa Batiashvili

With her profound, expressive performances, Lisa Batiashvili holds a firm place among the leading international artists, with the London Times calling her a "complete musician." Critics praise the Georgian violinist for her virtuosity, sensitivity, and charismatic presence. She was named "Instrumentalist of the Year 2015" by Musical America and is a winner of the prestigious international prize of the Italian Accademia Musicale Chigiana. Batiashvili maintains close partnerships with many top orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In 2021, she founded the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation to support highly gifted young musicians in her home country of Georgia. "Eventually, there comes a point where you look at the next generation and feel the desire to pass on some of what you yourself have experienced in music," she explains. The foundation has already awarded scholarships to five music students, whom she aims to accompany at the beginning of their professional artistic journey. Lisa Batiashvili has been an exclusive artist for Deutsche Grammophon since 2010. Her first album for the yellow label, Echoes of Time (February 2011), received an Echo Klassik award. This was followed in January 2013 by a CD featuring Brahms' Violin Concerto and Clara Schumann's Romances Op. 22. Accompanied by Nézet-Séguin, she recorded arrangements for violin and piano of several romances from Tchaikovsky's Opp. 6 and 73, which were then released together with Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique," performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Nézet-Séguin (September 2013). In the album Bach (August 2014), Batiashvili dedicated herself to works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, with her partners being Françoix Leleux, Emmanuel Pahud, and the Bavarian Radio Chamber Orchestra. In November 2016, she released an album featuring the violin concertos of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, which resulted from the fruitful collaboration with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim. Batiashvili's next DG album, Visions of Prokofiev, included the Russian composer's two violin concertos as well as three popular numbers from his stage works in new arrangements by her father, Tamás Batiashvili. The recording with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Nézet-Séguin was released in February 2018 and received an Opus Klassik award. Batiashvili was also a soloist in Ilan Eshkeri's highly acclaimed soundtrack album for the film The White Crow (directed by Ralph Fiennes), which came out in March 2019. Her 2020 album City Lights begins with the suite "City Memories," a tribute to the music and films of Charlie Chaplin, and then becomes an eclectic presentation of cities that hold special significance for Batiashvili. Musical companions include Katie Melua, Miloš Karadaglić, and Till Brönner. Nikoloz Rachveli, who arranged many pieces on the album, conducts the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the Georgian Philharmonic. ResMusica wrote in a review of City Lights: "Lisa Batiashvili's violin is unique in its ability to touch the listener and transport them deep into a world of fantasy." Her current album, Secret Love Letters, to be released in August 2022, explores the intimate and inexpressible messages that music can convey; it presents highly romantic works by Chausson, Debussy, Franck, and Szymanowski. Batiashvili is accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra – her first recording with an American ensemble – and its chief conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as well as by one of her foundation's first Young Artists, Georgian pianist Giorgi Gigashvili. For the fourth time, Lisa Batiashvili served as Artistic Director of the Audi Summer Concerts in Ingolstadt in June and July 2022. She herself performed Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto at the diverse festival and at a solidarity concert for Ukraine. Throughout the summer, she will tour Europe with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra with the Secret Love Letters program, with concerts in Edinburgh, Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, at the Lucerne Festival, and at the BBC Proms in London. At the beginning of the 2022/23 season, she will perform Beethoven's Violin Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in Prague and Bratislava (September); Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and François Leleux in Salzburg (October); again Beethoven with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Sir Antonio Pappano in Rome and Madrid (November); and the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Lahav Shani in London (December). Lisa Batiashvili was born in Tbilisi and moved to Germany with her family at the age of eleven. There she studied with Mark Lubotsky and Ana Chumachenco. In 1995, she made her breakthrough by winning second prize as the youngest participant in the history of the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition. In 2003, she received the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and in 2006, the Beethoven Ring from the Bonn Beethovenfest. Since then, she has won two MIDEM Classical Awards, a Choc de l’année, and three Echo/Opus Klassik awards. Lisa Batiashvili lives in Munich and plays a Guarneri "del Gesù" from 1739, generously on loan from a private collector. 7/2022