Sergei Prokofiev and Franz Schubert - a highly intelligent combination, highlighting the position of the two composers between tradition and innovation. Prokofiev's sonata oeuvre is significantly more present in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union than in Central Europe where, at best, his Seventh Sonata is only occasionally programmed. Yet with his nine completed sonatas, spanning his career from his youth up to the period shortly before his death in 1953, Prokofiev created a musical cosmos similar in range to Shostakovich's string quartets. Hailing from the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Elisso Bolkvadze has chosen the Second Sonata (1912), where Prokofiev adopts an incredibly delicate tone which, at the same time, appears aggressive in its motoric energy, reflecting the modernist spirit of the Russian capital of St Petersburg before the First World War.
Elisso Bolkvadze has complemented this with Schubert's four Impromptus D899, a popular cycle whose innovation is often underestimated. For, alongside his great piano sonatas, Schubert always put new forms to the test with compact, and sometimes also programmatic, messages. This also holds true for the Impromptus, where pure colour is combined with lyrical, dramatic and gestural aspects.
Georgian pianist Elisso Bolkvadze was selected as a UNESCO Artist for Peace in January 2015. She has won numerous international piano competitions, including the Van Cliburn, Vianna da Motta and Dublin International Piano Competitions. She is regularly invited to perform as a soloist alongside international orchestras, and also gives recitals in major concert halls across Europe and the United States. A superstar in her home country, she was awarded the prestigious national "Medal of Honour of the Georgian Government" in 1993. In 2013, Elisso Bolkvadze founded her own charitable foundation, "Lyra", which supports talented young Georgian pianists. She is the Artistic Director of the Batumi Music Festival in Georgia.
