Khatia Buniatishvili, 31, is an acclaimed Georgian-French pianist who has played the world’s greatest concert halls from Carnegie Hall in New York City, where she made her U.S. debut, to La Scala in Milan and the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. She has worked with legendary conductors including Placido Domingo, Mikhail Pletnev, and Vladimir Ashkenazy and has performed some of the world’s most technically complex, earth-shattering music by the likes of masters Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninov, and Franz Schubert.
Her new album, Schubert (2019), was recently released on Sony Classical. Here, she tells me about pianos as decorating accessories, the legitimacy of the keytar, and what she likes to play when drunk, among other things. After our interview at ELLE Decor headquarters, we paid a visit to one of New York City’s most famous piano stores for an impromptu private concert at which Khatia fittingly played one of Schubert’s “Four Impromptus,” which you can view below.
You know that scene in the movie Shine in which Geoffrey Rush, who plays piano virtuoso David Helfgott, walks up to a piano in a crowded restaurant and plays a mind-blowing rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee” by Rimsky-Korsakov? Have you ever done something like that?
I have done something like that, but it was for a more precise purpose. It wasn’t to impress people. I never like to impress and always try to be very modest. Everything I do onstage is about being extroverted, impressing an audience, but it was never a goal.
How about later we walk into Faust Harrison Pianos and pretend to be buying a piano. Then, at some point, you sit down at one and do an impromptu performance. How does that sound?
Why not? I’ll play some an Impromptu from my Schubert album.
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How apropos! Did you have a piano in your home growing up in Tbilisi, Georgia?
I did.
What kind?
It was an upright Soviet piano. It seemed nice at the time, but I don’t know where it is now.
Where was it located in the house?
It was in my bedroom, but it changed from time to time. I started to learn piano at age three.
This Sophisticated Home Strikes the Right Notes in ALL the Ways
You can sit down at a piano with a glass of wine and jam out to Liszt’s “La Campanella.” What do you think of people who can’t play at all buying them as decoration?
It’s their right if they want. Maybe they have guests who might play, or maybe they want their kids to learn someday. When I go to someone’s home and see a piano, I feel better. Even if it’s a superficial gesture, there might be a reason more profound behind it. You never know!
How refreshingly uncynical! Your new album features “Four Impromptus,” by Schubert. Vladimir Horowitz’s rendition from 1963 is a personal favorite of mine. What do you bring to your version that will make it stand out?
I have no ambition to say something new. I prefer to say something personal. It’s a very intimate process adapting a piece like this, because you get to know the composer through their notes. The connection you make in your own reading of a specific piece is the only authentic way of making a creative interpretation.
