Lisa Batiashvili, Violin
Giorgi Gigashvili, Piano

Lisa Batiashvili doesn’t just play the violin—she conjures worlds with it. Hailed as “the complete musician” (The Times, London), she has mesmerized audiences in the world’s most revered halls — including a spellbinding 2015 appearance in Richardson Auditorium. Now, in this rare and intimate duo recital, she joins forces with Giorgi Gigashvili, the young Georgian pianist protégé of Martha Argerich, whose volcanic energy and poetic touch are making waves across the globe. Their program is a journey through raw emotion and staggering virtuosity—Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 3 brims with charm and fire, setting the stage for Prokofiev’s haunting Violin Sonata No. 1—a masterpiece of shadow and intensity, where ghostly whispers, icy lyricism, and explosive power push both musicians to the edge. A new work by Josef Bardanashvili, a fellow Georgian whose music pulses with mystery and soul, makes its Princeton debut before the night closes in the rapture of Franck’s Violin Sonata—a piece so intoxicatingly beautiful it’s been called “a love letter in music.” This concert is a high-voltage meeting of artistic minds, generations, and traditions—a program of music that grabs you and doesn’t let go, performed by two of the most magnetic artists of our time.

Get to know these extraordinary artists in a conversation the evening prior to their recital as part of the “Music & Healing” series in which they will discuss cultural perseverance in their native country of Georgia and how that has spilled into the current war in Ukraine. Learn more>