Motherland

Khatia Buniatishvili – Motherland
Her most intimate album including solo works from Bach to Pärt

Following the success of her Chopin album on Sony Classical, Khatia Buniatishvili now reveals a new, highly personal side on her album ‘Motherland’.

The CD is an intimate quest encompassing solo piano works from Bach to Pärt and from Brahms to Kancheli, in which the themes of longing for home, the merriment of a folk dance and the eternal cycle of growth and decay are apparent. Spanning a broad stylistic and historical range, the album celebrates the works that have accompanied Khatia Buniatschvili’s personal path in life, including pieces from her Georgian homeland. Motherland juxtaposes the happy lightness of a ‘Slavonic Dance’ by Dvorak and the melancholy of Grieg’s lyrical ‘Homesickness’, and contrasts the elegant gaiety of Mendelssohn’s ‘Song without Words’ (op. 67/2) with the graceful introspection of Liszt’s ‘Lullaby’. Classics of the Romantic piano repertoire such as Chopin’s Étude in C-sharp minor (op. 25/7) and Brahms ‘Intermezzo’ (op. 117/2) are embedded between Bach’s cantata ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ and Arvo Pärt’s musical dedication ‘For Alina’.

Khatia Buniatishvili has been described by The Independent as “the young Georgian firebrand”. At the age of only 26 years, this Tblisi-born pianist has already achieved an exceptional maturity of interpretation and a distinctive artistic approach that make her playing unmistakable. Khatia’s warm, sometimes sorrowful playing may reflect a close proximity to Georgian folk-music, which, she attests, has greatly influenced her musicality. Critics emphasize that her playing has an aura of elegant solitude and even melancholy, which she does not feel to be a negative attribute. “The piano is the blackest instrument,” she says, a “symbol of musical solitude… I have to be psychologically strong and forget the hall if I want to share it with the audience.” Khatia Buniatishvili speaks five languages and lives in Paris.

• 1 Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750 - Aria: Schafe können sicher weiden
• 2 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840–1893 - October: Autumn Song
• 3 Felix Mendelssohn 1809–1847 - Lied ohne Worte in F-sharp minor op. 67/2
• 4 Claude Debussy 1862–1918 - Clair de lune
• 5 Giya Kancheli *1935 - When Almonds Blossomed (From the film by Lana Gogoberidze)
• 6 György Ligeti 1923–2006 - Musica ricercata No. 7
• 7 Johannes Brahms 1833–1897 - Intermezzo in B-flat minor op. 117/2
• 8 Franz Liszt 1811–1886 - Wiegenlied (Cradle Song) S 198
• 9 Antonín Dvořák 1841–1904 - Dumka – Slavonic Dance in E minor op. 72/2 (with Gvantsa Buniatishivili, piano)
• 10 Maurice Ravel 1875–1937 - Pavane pour une infante défunte
• 11 Frédéric Chopin 1810–1849 - Étude in C-sharp minor op. 25/7
• 12 Alexander Scriabin 1872–1915 - Étude in C-sharp minor op. 2/1
• 13 Domenico Scarlatti 1685–1757 - Sonata in E major K 380
• 14 Edvard Grieg 1843–1907 - Homesickness (Lyric Pieces op. 57: No. 6)
• 15 Traditonal / Khatia Buniatishvili *1987 - Vagiorko mai (Don’t you love me?)
• 16 George Frideric Handel 1685–1759 - Menuet in G minor
• 17 Arvo Pärt *1935 - Für Alina