Chopin, Liszt

On her first Warner Classics album pianist Mariam Batsashvili combines solo works by Franz Liszt – a figure of special significance for her – and his contemporary Frédéric Chopin. She left her native Georgia to study at the Franz Liszt Conservatory in Weimar and gained international recognition in 2014 when she won the 10th Franz Liszt Piano Competition. Chopin was just a year older than Liszt and the two became good friends in Paris. The two pianist-composers are, as Batsashvili explains, “very, very different in the way they express themselves, but I can hear in their music that they respected each other greatly.”