Khatia Buniatishvili: The Classical Music Superstar Honors Mozart with a Unique Twist in Her New Album

NEW YORK (AP) — Khatia Buniatishvili has been one of the most well-known classical musicians for more than a decade, but she prefers to keep the chatter about her celebrity buried beneath the crescendo of her music and charismatic performances.

“If I start to talk about my charisma, I think it might be the end. It’s like the peak of narcissism, right?” Buniatishvili said bashfully in a recent interview.

But it’s her command of the stage, combined with her expressive performance energy and glamourous exterior that has made her a household name in classical music. The pianist, born in the country of Georgia, along with a new generation of artists like Icelandic pop-jazz singer and celloist Laufey, French violinist Esther Abrami, Nigerian opera singer Babatunde Akinboboye and even pop superstar Lizzo, a classically trained flutist, are helping remove the elitist stigma often attached to the genre and are attracting millennial and Gen Z audiences.

“I’m the happiest person when I hear that … young people, it’s the movement of life,” said Buniatishvili, a two-time winner of Germany’s top award for classical performers, the Opus Klassik. “You can bring new life to them — to composers — thanks to these young people who are listening to it. I think it’s the major achievement you might have in life.”