©Photo: André Josselin

©Photo: Chris Singer

©Photo: Sammy Hart DGG

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)

“Batiashvili’s fearless playing is so tonally rich and technically immaculate.” (The Guardian)

Lisa Batiashvili, the Georgian-born German violinist, is praised by audiences and fellow musicians for her virtuosity. An award-winning artist, she has developed long-standing relationships with the world’s leading orchestras, conductors and musicians. As of 2021, Batiashvili has formed and leads the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation, which serves her lifelong dream and commitment in supporting young, highly talented Georgian musicians to thrive in their musical careers.

Batiashvili is the Artistic Director of Audi Sommerkonzerte, Ingolstadt. For the 2021 Festival, she performed Sibelius’ violin concerto under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the motto ‘Lights of Europe’.

In 2021/22 Batiashvili returns to North America for concerts with the Boston Symphony, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Chicago Symphony orchestras. In winter she embarks on her second recital tour across Europe with trio partners Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Gautier Capuçon, whilst other engagements include Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Lisa Batiashvili regularly appears on stage with orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker, London Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa and Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Recording exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon, Batiashvili’s latest album ‘City Lights’ was released in June 2020. The project marks a musical journey that takes listeners around the world to eleven cities with an autobiographical connection with music ranging from Bach to Morricone, and Dvořák to Charlie Chaplin. At the internationally renowned Concert de Paris on Bastille Day in Paris in 2020, she performed the title track City Memories which was broadcast internationally.

Her previous recording – ‘Visions of Prokofiev’ (Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Yannick Nezet-Seguin) – won an Opus Klassik Award and was shortlisted for the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Earlier recordings include the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius (Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim), Brahms (Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann), and Shostakovich No.1 (Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Esa-Pekka Salonen).

Bastiashvili has had DVD releases of live performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker/Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Bartók Violin Concerto No.1) and with Gautier Capuçon, Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and Christian Thielemann (Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Cello).

She has won a number of awards: 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. Batiashvili was named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 2015, was nominated as Gramophone’s Artist of the Year in 2017, and in 2018 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Sibelius Academy (University of Arts, Helsinki).

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

Gallery

Lisa Batiashvili - Beethoven: Violin Concerto © Münchner Philharmoniker

Lisa Batiashvili - City Lights album: sample mix featuring Legrand Paris Violon, Siegel Ich hab' noch einen koffer in Berlin, & Chaplin medley. All arranged by Nikoloz Rachveli © DG

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 - Brahms Violin Concerto trailer © Deutsche Grammophon

Euronews feature- Passion for the Violin © Euronews

“What a violinist! Lisa Batiashvili approaches Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto with masterful composure. Her playing is flawless, the technical demands of this showpiece among the virtuoso concertos cannot be heard from her. It goes without saying that she does not use fireworks to display technical skills, but rather puts them at the service of music. The Gewandhausorchester around Batiashvili follows this filigree and powerful, elegant and existential, romantic as well as classicist excursion with devoted self-assurance; giving and receiving, closely interwoven with the unique sparkle that Lisa Batiashvili elicits from her Guarneri.”

(Peter Korfmacher for Leipziger Volkszeitung, October 2021)

“Lisa Batiashvili was the breathtaking soloist, spinning out Szymanowski’s long, ecstatic lines with wonderful sweetness of tone and exquisite finesse”

(The Guardian, April 2019)

“Batiashvili’s playing was cool in the questing introduction…producing sophisticated lyricism…The second subject was warm and supple. The development, with its hopping staccato double-stops, was light on its feet, with an impish air. The cadenza was beautifully shaped and technically impeccable.”

(The Strad, November 2018)

“…Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, delivered with dazzling aplomb, and some succulent hush in the Canzonetta, by the reliably excellent Lisa Batiashvili.”

(The Times, Aug 2018)

“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)