Her technical prowess and ability to negotiate Liszt’s showy grandeur is a given, but her sense of his inner world, his wistful, nonchalant poetry (…) sets her apart as one to watch.
The Observer, Fiona Maddocks, 18/09/2019
The 27-year-old pianist Mariam Batsashvili already ranks among the most promising artists of her generation. She gained international recognition at the 10th Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht 2014. As BBC New Generation Artist, she made her debuts at the Cheltenham Festival, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and with the Ulster Orchestra at the BBC Proms. The summer of 2019 saw the release of her first album for Warner Classics.
She already gained her first experiences with leading symphony orchestras, including the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of James Gaffigan in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam (Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1), the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Rafael Payare (Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1), the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra (Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2), the Düsseldorf Symphony under Alexandre Bloch (Clara Schumann Piano Concerto) and the MDR Symphony Orchestra under Dmitry Liss (Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 K.488). She has also given recitals in more than 30 countries – among these China, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, France, Spain, Norway, the Baltic countries, Benelux and Germany. She has been the guest of many international festivals, such as the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Piano City festival in Milan and the Piano aux Jacobins festival in Toulouse.
She was nominated by the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) as ‘Rising Star’ for the 2016/17 season, and performed in the most significant concert halls throughout Europe. Last season, she gave performances at the Philharmonic Hall of St Petersburg, the Tonhalle Zürich, the Mozarteum Salzburg and the Wigmore Hall and made her acclaimed debut at the Philharmonie Berlin as part of the series “Debüt im Deutschlandfunk Kultur”.
Her debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Alexander Shelley, in which she played Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in 2018, resulted in an immediate re-invitation for the season of 2019/20 with his 2nd Piano Concerto. She also received great acclaim for her debut concerts in China and Japan and was immediately reinvited to play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra under Sylvain Cambreling. She also made her successful debuts at the Musikverein Vienna with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen (Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2) and in Brussels’ Flagey with Le Concert Olympique (Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 K.466). Special highlights of the 2020/21 season are her debuts at the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Edinburgh Festival and the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Lorraine (Clara Schumann Piano Concerto) as well as recitals at the Wigmore Hall, the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, the State Theatre Darmstadt and the Schumannfest Düsseldorf.
Born 1993 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Mariam Batsashvili first studied with Natalia Natsvlishvili at the E. Mikeladze Central Music School in her hometown, before continuing at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar with Professor Grigory Gruzman. In 2011 she won First Prize at the International Franz Liszt Competition for Young Pianists in Weimar, and received the prestigious Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Award in 2015. Mariam Batsashvili is a scholarship holder of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and is supported by The Keyboard Charitable Trust. She has been an official Yamaha Artist since 2017.
2020/2021 season
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