Songs In The Keys Of Life

The French-Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is a larger-than-life figure brimming with talent, ideas and a sense of urgency to introduce the next generation to classical music today.

- Renee Batchelor

Khatia Buniatishvili first took up the piano at the age of three, young even by the standards of music prodigies. Today, she is admired not just for her virtuosity and fierce intellect, but also for the daring way in which she has electrified the genre with her compelling personality and her open-mindedness. Her latest album, “Labyrinth”, released in October of 2020 under the Sony Classical label, features Buniatishvili’s wistful and beautiful interpretations of pieces by composers ranging from Bach to Brahms to Glass. But while she is steeped in the classical tradition — she earned the first place at the admissions exams of the Tbilisi Conservatory aged 16 and the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts at 19 — she has also attracted audiences unfamilar to the scene with her pop collaborations, notably the one with British band Coldplay on their 2015 album “A Head Full of Dreams.”

Beyond her extraordinary achievements in music, Buniatishvili was also chosen by Cartier as its newest ambassador because of her humanitarian work on issues like child development, refugee aid and climate justice. When she replied via email to questions from Singapore in early December, Buniatishvili was in Paris. Despite the relatively detached format of the interview, one of the first things she wrote was, “I am answering your questions and trying to connect with you. My philosophy of life is to be fully in the present. Even when I work on long-term projects, it is the working process and the nuances of every second of everyday life that counts and not the result — even if I have a vision as an entity of it,” she says.