German violinist Lisa Batiashvili, who is of Georgian descent, is equally admired by audiences and colleagues alike for her extraordinary virtuosity and musical depth. Over the years, the multi-award-winning musician has established close and lasting artistic relationships with the world's most important orchestras, conductors, and soloists.
In 2021, she fulfilled a long-held dream by establishing the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting young, highly talented Georgian musicians.
Batiashvili will tour with the Munich Philharmonic under Lahav Shani at the start of the 2025/26 season. This will be followed by engagements with Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Montreal and Philadelphia, and a tour with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under Klaus Mäkelä in 2026. Other highlights include projects with the Filarmonica della Scala, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra – as well as her passion project City Lights with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.
She will be performing chamber music on extensive tours in a piano trio with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Gautier Capuçon, as well as in a duo with Giorgi Gigashvili.
Lisa Batiashvili's most recent release on Deutsche Grammophon is the album Secret Love Letters (2022), recorded with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Her project City Lights is a musical journey through eleven cities that have special personal or artistic significance in her life – with music ranging from Bach to Morricone, from Dvořák to Charlie Chaplin. A twelfth city was added in 2022 with her single Desafinado, a tribute to Rio de Janeiro. At the internationally renowned Concert de Paris on France's national holiday in 2020, she performed the title track City Memories, which was broadcast worldwide.
Her impressive discography also includes Visions of Prokofiev with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Nézet-Séguin (awarded the Opus Klassik 2018), recordings of the violin concertos by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius with the Staatskapelle Berlin under Daniel Barenboim, by Brahms with the Staatskapelle Dresden under Christian Thielemann, and of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Her concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Nézet-Séguin, as well as Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Brahms' Double Concerto (with Gautier Capuçon and the Staatskapelle Dresden under Thielemann) have been released on DVD.
Batiashvili has been honored with numerous awards, including the MIDEM Classical Award, Choc de l’année, the Accademia Musicale Chigiana International Prize, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, and the Beethoven Ring Bonn. In 2015, she was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America, nominated for Gramophone Artist of the Year in 2017, and awarded an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in 2018.
From 2019 to 2022, she was artistic director of the Audi Summer Concerts in Ingolstadt. In 2025, she received the Kaiser Otto Prize from the city of Magdeburg for her commitment to fighting war and anti-Semitism and promoting European ideals, as well as the Pro Meritis Scientiae et Litterarum award from the Bavarian State Ministry.
Lisa Batiashvili lives in Berlin and plays a Joseph Guarneri “del Gesù” violin from 1739 – generously loaned to her by a private collector in Germany.