Mother Land

Mother Land

• Shrink-wrapped

Khatia Buniatishvili's new album, "Motherland," is an intimate quest encompassing solo piano works from Bach to Pärt and from Brahms to Kancheli, in which the themes of longing for home, the merriment of a folk dance and the eternal cycle of growth and decay are apparent. These are quiet, dreamy pieces, most of them not written for the concert hall, but expressing a personal journey for peace and a protected place. Spanning a broad stylistic and historical range, Motherland juxtaposes the happy lightness of a "Slavonic Dance" by Dvo ák and the melancholy of Grieg's lyrical "Homesickness" and contrasts the elegant gaiety of Mendelssohn's "Song without Words" (Op. 67/2) with the graceful introspection of Liszt's "Lullaby." Classics of the Romantic piano repertoire such as Chopin's Étude in C-sharp minor (Op. 25/7) and Brahms's "Intermezzo" (Op. 117/2) are embedded between Bach's cantata "Sheep May Safely Graze" and Arvo Pärt's musical dedication "For Alina." <br><br>Khatia Buniatishvili has been described by The Independent as "the young Georgian firebrand." At the age of only 26 years, this Tblisi-born pianist has already achieved an exceptional maturity of interpretation and a distinctive artistic approach that make her playing unmistakable. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2008 and has played with many famous orchestras around the world including the Israel Philharmonic with Kent Nagano, the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi.