Kha­tia Buni­at­ishvili’s play­ing has been de­scribed as hav­ing »an aura of el­eg­ant solitude and even mel­an­choly« It’s a per­fect char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of the pi­an­ist with such a wide palette of ex­pres­sion. Kha­tia Buni­at­ishvili com­mands a nat­ur­al mu­sic­al­ity. »Force of nature«, »Spir­ited­ness«, or »In­fin­ite free­dom« are fre­quently men­tioned at­trib­utes of her in­ter­pret­a­tion. These im­ages epi­tom­ize the earth­i­ness of the young Geor­gi­an.

For Kath­ia, the pur­pose of art is to touch people; the most bliss­ful mo­ments are those of shar­ing mu­sic with people, tak­ing them to places, they have nev­er been be­fore. Every con­cert stage feels dif­fer­ent for her: »I like this kind of ad­ven­ture mo­ment when you don’t know what it’s go­ing to be: it makes it more in­tense«, and this site in the midst of a se­greg­ated forest is cer­tainly un­com­mon.

The forest as a place of ma­gic and danger is found among myth­o­logy wherever the nat­ur­al state of wild land is forest: a forest is a loc­a­tion bey­ond which people nor­mally travel, where strange and won­drous things might oc­cur. Forests can also be places of refuge – a refuge from the speed of daily life, al­low­ing the minds to wander. It has been said that the forest knows all and is able to teach all – Aures sunt nem­or­is, oculi campestribus oris – the field has eyes, the woods have ears.

Buni­at­ishvili’s artist­ic ap­proach to mak­ing mu­sic is un­doubtedly as­so­ci­ated with the Ro­mantic tra­di­tion, al­ways main­tain­ing a fine bal­ance between un­hinged wild­ness and lyr­ic­al in­tro­spec­tion. The rep­er­toire com­prises cheer­ful mo­ments, mel­an­chol­ic pas­sages and noc­turne-like epis­odes: vir­tu­ously brought to life throughout a con­cert ex­per­i­ence with a great qual­ity of in­tim­acy and gen­er­ous ar­dour.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach
Sheep my safely graze – Schafe können sicher weiden
from Cantata BWV 208 “Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd“, B-flat major Transcription by Egon Petri

October, No. 10
from “The Seasons”, op. 37b, D minor

Frédéric Chopin
Scherzo No. 2, op 31, b minor

Claude Debussy
Clair de lune, No. 3 from “Suite Bergamasque”, D flat major

Giya Kancheli
When Almonds Blossomed
Tune from the film by Lana Gogoberidze, D minor / C major

Johannes Brahms
Intermezzo, op 117 / 2, b flat minor

Maurice Ravel
La Valse
Piano solo version

Aleksandr Skrjabin
Etude, op. 2, C sharp minor

Frédéric Chopin
Etude op. 25 / 7, C sharp minor

Antonín Dvorák
Slavonic Dance op. 72 / 2, (Allegretto grazioso) for four hands, E minor

Johannes Brahms
Hungarian Dance No. 1, A minor
Igor Stravinsky
Trois mouvements de Pétrouchka
- Danse russe
- Chez Pétrouchka
- La Semaine grasse

Traditional / Khatia Buniatishvili
Vagiorko mai / Don’t you love me?

Georg Friedrich Händel
Menuett, from Suite des Pièces, G minor
arranged by Wilhelm Kempff