2013

Khatia Buniatishvili is “justifiably hailed as one of the great pianists of the future” by the UK’s Guardian. Prize winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, Khatia was distinguished as a BBC New Generation Artist in 2009 and invited to collaborate with the BBC Orchestra throughout the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 seasons. The Financial Times described Khatia’s performance of Liszt as “magisterial” and her Schumann as “poetic and profound”. Khatia has appeared with many of the world’s premiere orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and the NDR Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.

With his whimsical, melancholy music, Yann Tiersen has become a sought-after composer. Borrowing from French folk music, chanson, musette waltz, and street music, as well as rock, avant-garde, and classical and minimalist influences, Tiersen’s deceptively simple style has been likened to Chopin, Erik Satie, Philip Glass, and Michael Nyman. Tiersen gained worldwide acclaim for his score to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, and Wolfgang Becker’s German tragicomedy, Goodbye Lenin! When asked to discuss his esthetic, Yann Tiersen describes it perfectly, “Let’s live in an enormous world of sound we can use randomly, with no rules at all. Let’s play with sound, forget all knowledge and instrumental skills, and just use instinct.”