Khatia Buniatishvili – Schubert (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:23:27 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Recordings of Schubert’s swan song in the piano sonata genre, the Piano Sonata in B flat major, D. 960, are abundant, and Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili deserves credit for trying something well out of the mainstream. This said, your reaction to the album may correspond to your general orientation toward iconoclasm. Buniatishvili’s approach has the virtue of being coherent: she plays Schubert in a Lisztian way, and to underscore this she wraps up the program with Liszt’s transcription of the famed song Ständchen, from the Schwanengesang cycle, D. 957. The four Impromptus of Op. 90 strike a nice balance between pianistic freedom and the intimate dimensions of these pieces; sample the final A flat major piece to hear the strongest argument for what Buniatishvili is doing here. She has a good deal of Lisztian charisma and a way of making you listen to what she’s doing. The B flat major sonata you may find less satisfying. The opening movement is quite deliberate, with lots of tempo rubato, large dynamic contrasts, and pregnant slowdowns, with an enormous and not fully explicable full stop before the recapitulation begins. Other pianists (Sviatoslav Richter comes to mind) have approached the work this way, but perhaps nobody has taken the slow movement as slowly as Buniatishvili does: she takes more than 14 minutes with it, where most pianists take nine or ten. The last two movements are more conventional, and they can’t quite cash the checks that the enormous first two movements are writing. This is a case where your mileage (kilometers?) may definitely vary, but where the artist definitely hasn’t made safe choices.

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Khatia Buniatishvili – Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 & Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:30 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

A highlight of Khatia’s recording career where she reunites with Paavo Järvi for her first orchestral recording in four years. The recording includes Rachmaninoff 2 & 3 – rarely combined on one CD and two blockbuster concertos of the late-romantic repertoire – especially the 2nd concerto was featured in many famous movies such as Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch (1955) or Clint Eastwoods’ film Hereafter (2010). The 3rd concerto was prominently featured in Shine (1996) with David Helfgott. This album was recorded with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, at Rudolfinum, Dvorak Hall, Prague.

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Khatia Buniatishvili – Motherland (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:50 minutes | 1004 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

As she has demonstrated in her critically acclaimed albums of the keyboard music of Liszt and Chopin, Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is a stunning virtuoso with impressive skills and her dynamic playing compels listening. However, for her 2014 Sony album, Motherland, she finds subtle expressions in her favorite character pieces, and none of them could be considered showstoppers. Most of the selections reflect calm and intimate moods, typified by Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, Tchaikovsky’s Autumn Song, Debussy’s Clair de lune, and Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, while the liveliest pieces, which include Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words in F sharp minor, György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata No. 7, Dvorák’s Slavonic Dance in E minor, and Scarlatti’s Sonata in E major, offer rather modest displays of technique. Instead of dazzling her listeners, Buniatishvili is putting forward her personal, private side in this understated program, and the key to her selections is the sense of yearning that these pieces evoke. The most passionate outpouring of emotion comes in her own arrangement of Vaguiorko ma, a Georgian folk song that surely must hold a special place in her emotional world. Because this is a gentle and poignant album, listeners may find it is best appreciated in a quiet space with few distractions. –Blair Sanderson, AllMusic

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Khatia Buniatishvili – Labyrinth (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:27 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Sony Classical presents Buniatishvilis eagerly-anticipated new album Labyrinth.’ As befits this dazzling, passionate and mercurial performer, Labyrinth will cover a range of beautiful and haunting works for piano by composers ranging from Bach, Vivaldi and Scarlatti, to Chopin, Brahms and Satie to Glass, Ligeti and Gainsbourg. Labyrinth was recorded in France at La Grande Salle Pierre Boulez, Philharmonie de Paris. Khatia Buniatishvili is a French-Gregorian concert pianist who studied in Tbilisi with Tengiz Amiredijibi and in Vienna with Oleg Maisenberg. She has been a Sony Classical exclusive artist since 2010.

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Khatia Buniatishvili – Kaleidoscope – Mussorgsky, Ravel, Stravinsky (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:58 minutes | 809 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

This is not exactly an easy program offered up to us by diabolical Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili (* 1987): Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, Ravel’s La Valseand the Three movements from Petrushka by Stravinsky – three of the biggest and fiercest works of the piano repertoire. After her Liszt and Chopin albums, the new album shows that young and spirited musician has a bright future, even though her career has already seen her appear on some of the world’s brightest stages, with orchestras of the highest order. To compar her to a young Martha Argerich is not far from the truth… It is up to the listener to decide whether he/she wishes to be led astray into extreme extraordinary sounds, rhythms and rubato, all of which are embraced by Buniatishvili, but it is clear that her charm, power and persuasion are most compelling.

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Khatia Buniatishvili – Chopin (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:22 minutes | 555 MB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

”Chopin´s music is like a breath of a young soul, with no time to be indifferent to love”, says Khatia Buniatishvili. The Georgian pianist, whom the London Evening Standard described as “a force of nature [with] a truly staggering technique to generate performances that leave you gasping” dedicates her second album to Frédéric Chopin. Buniatishvili presents her very personal approach to the composer with a programme encompassing five masterpieces, among them the Sonata No. 2 with the famous Funeral March as well as the Second Piano Concerto.

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