Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili finds transformative power through fine art

Khatia Buniatishvili // Photo Courtesy of Jean-Baptiste Mondino

French-Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili began her career at the age of six years old, and in the years since, has tackled the likes of Franz Liszt, Frederic Chopin, and Beethoven on album, as well as performing the world over, to say nothing of collaborating with the likes of Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Buniatishvili has also released several albums of a more experimental nature, such as Labyrinth, wherein the pianist has Ennio Morricone’s Deborah’s theme from Once Upon a Time in America on the same program as John Cage’s “4’33”.

Buniatishvili takes the stage at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts at Helzberg Hall as part of their Harriman-Jewell Series on Tuesday, Sept. 17. We spoke with the pianist to discuss her career before the event.

The Pitch: You’ve been playing since you were very, very young How do you keep the music fresh when you’ve been playing since you were six years old?

Khatia Buniatishvili: Well, I think life can be full of surprises and every day might bring new, very interesting, curious things on a everyday basis. You’re every day refreshed by a richness and profoundness of the surprise life might bring you.

It’s the same thing in music, in art. Even if I play sometimes same piece during years, it can be that you can repeat the same piece from one moment to another on a concert, even while I’m performing on stage. Sometimes, I just hear myself, this sound I’ve never heard before. Sometimes there are things that by genius composers. I don’t talk in generally about any music, but some genius composers, you have an impression is every time you discover something extremely new for you and profound and refreshing, I guess it’s like life because we created music, we created art, and, probably, we are somehow trying to make it as the life is done itself to imitate a little bit of life and make a little bit of dreaming.

Do you find that when you collaborate with different folks that that give you new perspective on what you do?

What I’m doing, I want to say music and as an interpreter, performing doesn’t include collaborations. I mean, you could do collaborations, but our life mainly is composed by being in touch with the instrument directly and with the composers, performing, and actually, quite a lot alone with the instrument while practicing and while being on stage.

I like this kind of loneliness, but of course, collaborations, it can bring different perspective in many different things. It doesn’t change my individuality or my perception of music or interpretation in general, but it’s like nice meetings in life. New people bring different colors in your life and it’s the same thing, I guess. Definitely, it can inspire you.

What appeals to you so much about the music of Franz Liszt? He’s an artist to whom you’ve returned in recordings several times and I feel like he’s a composer who is maybe not as recognized by the general public.

Yeah, it’s true. I always love to include the Liszt pieces in recordings and also on stage. There is, almost in every concert, one piece of Liszt. Liszt is more like a composer that I like to perform because it’s somehow fitting my playing as a performer, because he was himself one of the greatest players of his times, as we know from history of music.

You can see in his music, actually, that it is quite virtuoso and quite difficult, but at the same time, it just fits. Well, I wouldn’t generalize it. Some other pianists maybe have other composers that they feel they’re fitting better. But, for me, Liszt feels like even though it’s extremely difficult, it’s somehow, as it is in your body, and it lets you outplay the way you feel it in a very harmonious and very comfortable way.

I also find that in his music, although he has also very dark and tragic music as well like, “La lugbre gondola” that I recorded, which is quite unusual, autumnal piece for his epoch. But also, even though he has a very rich palette of different ways of creating music and expressing emotions through music, it stays still a composer that knows how to celebrate. He likes to celebrate life, I think.

He had some religious life, as well because he was an abbot, and he also was a person who was quite grounded and loved to like life on earth as well, but, at the same time, all these different things he put in together in a very harmonious way and celebrate life. I think that during the concerts, while I’m performing different kinds of music, sometimes it’s tragic, sometimes it’s joyful, but at the end, I think we should still end with hope—some celebration that brings us all together and gives us optimism about any kind of solutions in life, or I think that’s a relief to celebrate sometimes.

It’s something that you do with your body. You just feel being part of the celebration with your whole body in mind. I just feel very happy performing his music, like dancing a little bit.

You just answered the next question I had, which is that it seems as though performing Liszt’s music is a very physical act. It seems as though like you have to put your whole body into it, as opposed to sitting and playing. There’s a definite physicality and heft to his compositions.

Absolutely. And I mentioned the dance. You definitely involve all your body, in my case. Again, I don’t like to generalize because maybe some other pianists wouldn’t agree with that, but, in my opinion, it definitely involves all your body and you fill the music with your whole body. At the same time, you forget your body and everything that is material becomes immaterial, like dance.

Sometimes you watch dance, like ballet or other contemporary genres, any kind of dance, and first of all, what you see is the movement. You see a body that is moving, and then, if it’s really wonderfully done, you forget about body moving and you actually are in a way here to have a storytelling. You hear some stories, you see some stories that’s been told through the bodies and the movement. It’s the same thing about this.

When you’re recording albums, what is the approach for you when you’re making albums which focus on one composer such as Franz Liszt or Rachmaninoff or Schubert versus something that’s a little more conceptual, such as Motherland or Labyrinth?

There are two ways of making CDs for me, which is one is creating the atmosphere of one composer. Then, the other one, as you said, more conceptual album. The difference is that when it’s about one composer, it’s like getting into a role, being an actor or something. You completely enter in the skin of another person, and of course, the way you feel it, but you completely swim in this world, which is a composer’s world.

I love it because I feel transformed and also somehow finding a different world where I can leave for a moment. I’m totally feeling the atmosphere of the composer so much that sometimes it’s even influences my style, state of mind, and my way of living during that time. If it’s Schubert, it was more painful and a very long process and at the same time, beautiful, but lots of related with the patience and waiting and being capable of enduring the pain and things like that. Somehow, it also influences your life.

It’s not something magical or mysterious. I think you put yourself in a state of mind, which brings you a certain state of life, which you lead yourself to that. That’s about being in one composer’s skin and when I’m doing the conceptual album, it’s more about creating something from—thanks to other people’s music, of course—but I’m trying to create it like a kind of a cycle where there’s a dramaturgy that you can follow.

Sometimes, you don’t understand what does Morricone do with Bach or Satie, but then, if you listen the whole album—maybe not, some people might not agree—but there is always a dramaturgy which brings you somewhere where you might feel lost, but there is a sense of being lost as well, because I think that whatever it shows at the end of whatever period of time, century, epoch, or style you choose, if there is music that touches you, somehow you can always find a connection.

You have to make a thought about it, but still you can make a connection with different styles. And at the end, there is no more style. There is just a cycle of different pieces that makes a dramaturgy and emotional dramaturgy and also intellectual.

Khatia Buniatishvili takes the stage at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts at Helzberg Hall as part of their Harriman-Jewell Series on Tuesday, September 17. Details on that show here.