The first female winner of the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition back in 2014, Georgian-born Mariam Batsashvili is one of the most compelling keyboard talents around today, capable of technical feats yet able to find poetry in even the most virtuosic pianistic fireworks. She was on the roster of the BBC’s influential New Generation Artist scheme from 2017 to 2019.

Breathtaking pyrotechnics and touching fragility sit side by side in her International Festival debut recital. She begins with four larger-than-life piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt, in which the composer transforms music originally conceived for voice – the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, as well as three songs by Schubert, including the darkly dramatic Erlkönig – into dazzling vehicles for a pianist’s virtuosity.

Batsashvili continues with the Romanticism of Schumann’s eight sublime Fantasiestücke, Op12, which explode with dramatic energy and subside in exquisite poetry as the composer gives free rein to both extremes of his creative personality. To close, she returns to Liszt, the bright, sunny Valse de bravoure, expressly designed to exhibit its pianist’s astonishing technical prowess.

Supported by The Inches Carr Trust