Khatia Buniatishvili: Pianist who storms the classics

Georgian concert pianist Khatia Buniatishvili has had to face the music from classical music purists who accuse her of beating the piano black and blue and find her low-cut body-fitting gowns, sexually provocative.

In fact classicalite.com thrashes the 29-year-old with a disclaimer, "Do you love classical music? If so, Khatia Buniatishvili will likely piss you off at some point."

But Buniatishvili, who performed on July 7 and 8 at National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, with the Switzerland's oldest orchestra – Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (LSO) under conductor James Gaffigan, is unfazed. "...when they pay 'more' attention to my looks, I find that viewpoint very limited. When I start playing, I forget my body. I'm just in the motion."

It's only music scores she's reading, not critics' wrath. Given her list of credentials, she can afford not to. The BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist of 2009-11 has had collaborations with Coldplay and violin virtuoso Renaud Capuçon, and renowned orchestras, especially the Philharmonic orchestras, under wielding batons of conductors Zubin Mehta and Charles Dutoit; she has also performed over ten years at prestigious global venues like New York's Carnegie Hall and Paris'Auditorium du Louvre, records with Sony Classical and just released a fourth album.

But watching her receive long standing ovations for the July 8 concert, the dichotomous views to her playing makes one ponder. It's hard to take your eyes of Buniatishvili, who, at intervals, arches towards the orchestra to procure energy from their music-making, as if inhaling from a heady cocktail, before setting herself upon the piano with renewed gusto to tackle the powerful compositions of Antonín Dvorák, Edvard Grieg and Carl Maria von Weber, that sometimes make her jump off her seat. In the process, becoming a rasik herself and LSO's cherry on the top with that red fishtail gown.

In her defense, she compares music to a relationship, to theatre and literature, not always aesthetically appealing. "There's aggression, pain, hatred, and also love and sincerity. When you are doing art, you have to be sincere, expose yourself, be true. I can be very passionate, extreme, sometimes over-the-edge, but never mean. So no, I've never broken a piano."

Buniatishvili, 29, who speaks Georgian, French, English, Russian and German, hails from Tbilisi and is a child of the chaotic '90s post-Soviet era. "Anyone could get shot on the streets. I've seen my parents struggle to earn every day. So how much ever success or beautiful things I see, I still feel connected to those with problems. But I'd say, anyone can be successful. If you are sincere, work hard and know what you want."

Her mother Natalia, first to introduce her to the piano, was also her first teacher. "I was two, and my sister Gvansta, four, when my mother invented games around the piano to get use, because of which I took to it like a fish to water. Whenever I have a problem in music, she solves it."

Other teachers, Tengiz (Gizy) Amirejibi at the Tbilisi State Conservatory, exposed her to diverse sounds and associate colour with music, while Oleg Maisenberg at the Vienna Academy for Music and Performing Arts made her confident about interpreting a piece.

She loves listening to Brahms, Bach and Beethoven. "I like composers who make you wonder, how could they find this sound?" The staunch Lisztian also admits she finds incredible energy and pleasure playing Franz Liszt."

Motherland, her previous album, was an ode to feminism, and creativity. "When someone asks me where I come from, I tell them the only truth I know, that I come from my mother."

Ask about her song Kaleidoscope in Coldplay's album, A Head Full of Dreams, she reveals, "It's a weird coincidence I'd also named my album Kaleidoscope (2016). I just had an 18-second intro. This song also has President Obama's voice and (American poet) Coleman Barks reading a Rumi poem (The Guest House). My album is about the confusion - are we allowed to be happy despite these terrible events in the world?"

In fact after the November 2015 Paris attacks, she wrote an emotional public letter to Chris Martin. "He's one of the funniest and most beautiful people I've met in my life. Not many people like that in my world which has so much artificiality."

She's starred in a documentary, April in Paris, and wants to make soundtracks for movies. "One life is not enough. I want to do more such things."