Lisa Batiashvili

Violin

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“She played with pure, gorgeous tone and fabulous technique… Could you have fairly asked for more? The audience, to judge from its standing ovation, was fully content.”
The New York Times

Artistic Director: Audi Sommerkonzerte Ingolstadt (2019 – 2021)

Lisa Batiashvili, nominated as Gramophone’s Artist of the Year 2017, is this season’s Artist-in-Residence with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome). Praised by audiences and fellow musicians for her virtuosity and “profound sensitivity” (Financial Times), the Georgian-born violinist, who has lived in Germany for over 25 years, has developed long-standing relationships with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Berliner Philharmoniker, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and London Symphony Orchestra. From 2019 Batiashvili will be the Artistic Director of Audi Sommerkonzerte, Ingolstadt.

In the 2017/18 season Lisa will perform the UK premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No.2 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Sakari Oramo). As part of her residency with Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, she will perform concertos by Tchaikovsky (Antonio Pappano), and Prokofiev (Manfred Honeck), as well as Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Oboe (François Leleux). Lisa will debut with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and tour Europe with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (Vladimir Jurowski and Lorenzo Viotti), the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Antonio Pappano), and Staatskapelle Dresden (Alan Gilbert). Other performance highlights include the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla), Münchner Philharmoniker (Alan Gilbert), and Sydney Symphony Orchestra (Dima Slobodeniouk).

Recording exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon, Lisa’s latest album, a recording of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius violin concertos with Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin, received international critical acclaim.

Lisa has been awarded the MIDEM Classical Award, the Choc de l’année, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana International Prize, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival’s Leonard Bernstein Award and the Beethoven-Ring.

Lisa lives in Munich and plays a Joseph Guarneri “del Gesu” from 1739, generously loaned by a private collector.

Gallery

Lisa Batiashvili - Dvořák: Violin Concerto with Berlin Philharmonic/Sir Simon Rattle (excerpt) © EuroArts

Lisa Batiashvili - Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto with Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim © Arte

Lisa Batiashvili - Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 (excerpt) © Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Servus TV

Lisa Batiashvili - Echoes of Time trailer © Deutsche Grammophon

Lisa Batiashvili - Brahms Violin Concerto trailer © Deutsche Grammophon

Euronews feature- Passion for the Violin © Euronews

Lisa Batiashvili - Beethoven: Violin Concerto (excerpt) © Sony © Sony

Lisa Batiashvili - Tzintsadze: Miniatures (excerpt) © Sony © Sony

“Batiashvili floats the endless melody of the second movement with perfect poise”

(Telegraph, March 2018)

“She flings off the quicksilver flight of the scherzo with breathtaking brilliance”

(Telegraph, March 2018)

“Batiashvili was completely in the zone – masterful, committed, dream-like and sometimes nightmarish with fiery aggression, bow flailing over strings and fingers nimble and precise. Her performance was captivating and totally absorbing, full of tension, reflection and impassioned drama.”

(Bachtrack, November 2017)

“… the concerto does make a fine showcase for Batiashvili’s fearless playing, which is so tonally rich and technically immaculate.”

(The Guardian, November 2017)

“… a magnificently lithe and lyrical performance of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto from Lisa Batiashvili, which caught the heroic stature of the music without any sense of strain.”

(The Telegraph, July 2017)

“… fabulously agile, intense soloist”

(The Guardian, July 2017)

“Lisa Batiashvili played Dvorak’s Violin Concerto, and did so brilliantly. Fiery, eloquent and rich-toned, she searched the music for maximum expression and brought passion to the solo line.”

(Classical Source, April 2017)

“She’s a dreamy-sounding, inward soloist at the start, shaping the melodies with care yet propelling them forward – this mammoth work has rarely seemed so concise. The Sibelius soars and sings in the first movement, and dances in the finale with a rare agility.”

(The Guardian, November 2016)

“…carefully executed, tremendously confident and entirely devoid of bravura or machismo. Batiashvili’s playing was clear in every way – sparkling articulation, pure sound in high positions, and phrasing and shifts simultaneously carefully planned and utterly artistic.”

(The Strad, September 2016)

“There is something so super-intuitive about (Lisa’s) playing that, while she is performing, the brilliance of her technique, the range of her colours and the sheer invention of her phrasing are subsumed into the intrigue of her musical storytelling”

(Edward Seckerson, Gramophone Magazine, January 2016)

“It is a tribute to Barenboim, and particularly to the musicianship of Lisa Batiashvili, that the excellence of her performance of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto was far from overshadowed by the Elgar that followed. Batiashvili’s playing had all the mix of gutsy grandeur and soaring lines the piece demands, with the details never blurred even in the tearaway finale, while the interplay between soloist and orchestra was of a very special order.”

(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, April 2015)

“The first half of the second concert in the series was no less glorious, as Lisa Batiashvili joined Barenboim and his band for Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D. There was no trace of vanity in her playing or her body-language, and she presided over the orchestra as persuasively as Argerich had done – indeed, for much of the time Barenboim let this young Georgian virtuoso set the pace. She brought classical restraint to this high-Romantic music, with no indulgence in swoops or slides apart from the ones dictated by the score, and she delivered those – even when rapidly double-stopped – with flawless ease and precision; for the Canzonetta she found a chaste beauty of sound.”

(Michael Church, The Independent, April 2015)