Born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2000, Giorgi took his first piano lessons without ever thinking about becoming a professional pianist. Passionate about singing and arranging Georgian folk and pop songs, he successfully competed in various Georgian singing contests at the age of 12. He did however continue his formal musical training at the Paliashvili Central Music School for Gifted Children and at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, under the guidance of Revaz Tavadze.

Everyone has an idol, and for Giorgi it has always been Martha Argerich. His pianistic career’s turning point came about in April 2019 when he won the 1st Prize at the Vigo International Piano Competition, where Martha Argerich chaired the jury with Nelson Freire at her side. Some months later Giorgi also won the Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the 62nd Busoni International Piano Competition.

The outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic obliged him to remain in Georgia, where he began to write electronic music and songs which have become extremely popular.

2021, on the other hand, offered a fresh stimulus for Giorgi’s other calling, the classical piano: the Hortense Anda-Bührle Bursary, awarded to him at the 15th Géza Anda Piano Competition in Zurich, brought him an invitation to the KlavierOlymp in the German town of Bad Kissingen, where he won the 1st Prize as well as the Audience Prize. At the same time, he joined Nelson Goerner’s class at the Geneva University of Music.

Giorgi is supported by Martha Argerich for his studies in Geneva, by the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation and the Géza Anda-Foundation.

Piano

Giorgi Gigashvili

Giorgi Gigashvili opens his programme with a pair of Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas, a set of one-movement works with idiomatic harpsichord writing, which demands great technical proficiency from the performer. The D major is particularly challenging, asking the player to tackle multiple instances of hand crossing, parallel intervals moving together and quick, repeated note patterns. The use of these techniques reveals the development of new playing techniques of the time, which, combined with the innovative use of new musical structures, point to the emerging Classical style of the time. 

We move into the 19th century for the second part of the concert, with a set of three solo piano Intermezzi composed by Brahms towards the end of his life when he was staying in Bad Ischl, a spa town in Austria. This triptych of dreamy, elegiac pieces are autumnal in mood, supposedly once described by the composer as ‘three lullabies to my sorrow’. The first intermezzo is recognisable by its gentle rocking lullaby, featuring two lines from ‘Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament’, an old Scottish ballad. When Clara Schumann first heard of the existence of these pieces, she wrote to Brahms – a close friend – asking him to send them to her. There are subtle echoes of the ‘Clara Theme’ which ran through a lot of the work of her husband, Robert Schumann, who incidentally is the dedicatee of the final work in the programme, Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor. 

By the time Liszt’s sonata was completed in 1853, his career as a travelling virtuoso had almost entirely ended and he was focusing almost exclusively on composition. In contrast to the Brahms work, Clara Schumann refused to perform this sonata because she found it ‘merely a blind noise’. While much of the initial response was critical, Wagner praised the piece after a private performance in London. ‘The sonata is beautiful beyond compare,’ he wrote to Liszt. ‘Great, sweet, deep and noble, sublime as you are yourself. It moved me most deeply.’ In the years since, it has attracted a lot of discussion from scholars concerning its symbols and potential meanings. Some have argued that it’s autobiographical, with contrasts in the music representing the different facets of Schumann’s personality, while others have suggested that it might be a musical portrait of the Faust legend, or an allegory set in the Garden of Eden dealing with the fall of man.

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Giorgi Gigashvili

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