As you like it by Nino Gvetadze

Nodar Gabunia, Giya Kancheli

Nino Gvetadze

As you like it

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917200362
Catnr: CC 720036
Release date: 05 September 2025
Preorder

1 CD	€ 19.95	Preorder

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917200362

Catalogue number
CC 720036

Release date
05 September 2025

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Nino Gvetadze: Some music stays with you for a lifetime — not just in your memory, but in your hands, your ears, your way of feeling the world. For me, that music began in Tbilisi, Georgia, where I was born and raised, and where these sounds first took root. The journey of this album begins with the music of Nodar Gabunia — a composer, mentor, and teacher who shaped my early musical voice. His musical language is deeply personal, yet unmistakably his — full of clarity, warmth, wisdom, wit, and beauty. The second half of the album gently shifts into the sound world of Giya Kancheli — a close friend of Gabunia’s. While internationally renowned for his symphonic works, at home Kancheli’s music for theatre and film is woven into the fabric of daily life. His melodies drift through the air — subtle, poetic, melancholic, and full of unspoken emotion. Recording this album felt less like performing and more like remembering. The music flowed naturally, as if something long held inside was finally f inding its voice. It felt like writing a diary in sound — one filled with affection, gratitude and quiet moments of awe.

Artist(s)

Nino Gvetadze (piano)

Born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgian pianist Nino Gvetadze leads an international career as a soloist and a chamber musician. Her performances have been praised by many critics throughout the Europe and Asia. Nino received various awards, the most important were the Second Prize, Press Prize and Audience Award at the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition 2008. She became the winner of prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2010. Since 2019 Nino Gvetadze is the Artistic Leader of Naarden International Piano Festival. Nino Gvetadze has performed with many outstanding conductors such as Michel Plasson, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Michel Tabachnik, John Axelrod and Jaap van Zweden and with orchestras such as the Rotterdam, Residentie-The Hague, Brussels, Espoo-Helsinki, Warsaw, Seoul and Netherlands Philharmonic, Bergische and the...

Nino Gvetadze has performed with many outstanding conductors such as Michel Plasson, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Michel Tabachnik, John Axelrod and Jaap van Zweden and with orchestras such as the Rotterdam, Residentie-The Hague, Brussels, Espoo-Helsinki, Warsaw, Seoul and Netherlands Philharmonic, Bergische and the Rheinische Philharmonie, Münchner Symphoniker, amongst others. She toured with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Camerata RCO and Amsterdam Sinfonietta.

Recent highlights are the performance of Ulvi Cemal Erkin’s piano concerto in Istanbul and the Variations on a nursery tune of Dohnány with the Liege Royal Philharmonic and chief conductor Gergely Madaras.

In recital Nino has performed all over the world, among other in Hannover (PRO MUSICA Preisträger amKlavier-Zyklus), Bayreuth, Herkulessaal and Prinzregententheater Munich, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet at the Spoleto Festival, Lucerne Piano Festival, Bunka-kaikan Hall Tokyo, Kuhrhaus Wiesbaden, the Festival Piano aux Jacobins (Toulouse), Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (Finland). In the Netherlands Nino is a regular guest at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven and Edesche Concertzaal. Since 2008 Nino plays in the "Arosa Trio" with her colleagues Frederieke Saeijs and Maja Bogdanovic.

Nino Gvetadze is a Challenge Classics artist. On her 2nd album “Visions” she presents piano pieces of the English composer Cyril Scott. Music journal “Pianist” wrote about her first CD “Ghosts” with the 24 Préludes of Chopin: ‘Gvetadze makes the listener - partly thanks to the wonderful recording - companion of the most intimate thoughts’. Repertoire that has been released on other labels: piano works by Mussorgsky (Brilliant Classics), Rachmaninoff Preludes op 23 and op 32 (Etcetera), “Debussy” with the Préludes book I, Estampes and Claire de Lune (Orchid) and “Widmung” with Liszt piano works (Orchid). The Debussy CD was editor’s choice of both International Record Review (April 2014).

In Tbilisi Nino studied with Veronika Tumanishvili, Nodar Gabunia and Nana Khubutia. After her graduation Nino moved to the Netherlands to study with Paul Komen and Jan Wijn. Nino plays on a Steinway Grand Piano, kindly lent to her by the Dutch National Music Instrument Foundation.

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Composer(s)

Nodar Gabunia

Nodar Gabunia (1933-2000) dominated the Georgian music scene in the latter decades of the 20th century. While still in his twenties, he caught the ear of Dmitriy Shostakovich, who described him as one of the most talented composers of his generation.
After graduating with honours from the Moscow State Conser-vatory, where he studied piano under Aleksandr Goldenweiser and composition under Aram Khachaturian, he returned to Georgia to lead the piano department at the Tbilisi State Conservatory. In 1983, he became vice-chancellor of the conservatory, a position he held for the rest of his life.
In the course of his illustrious career, Gabunia gained equal recognition as a pianist, composer and teacher.
Gabunia taught many outstanding Georgian pianists.
Concerts by his students were always keenly anticipated events in the country’s cultural life.
Along with the well-established classical repertoire, he actively promoted works by Schoenberg, Kurtag, Berio and Stockhausen, which were otherwise rarely performed in the Soviet Union.
At various stages in his career, Gabunia taught as a visiting professor at the conservatories of Paris, London, The Hague and New Orleans.
Soon after he died, his students honoured his memory by founding a national piano competion in his name.

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Giya Kancheli

Giya Kancheli is the author of seven symphonies plus a series of very sad compositions featuring the viola, a lamenting choir and a supporting orchestra. His homeland Georgia is very different from other Russian regions. The climate, food and customs are very different from everything the Westerners know about the post Soviet Union. The country borders the Black Sea, Turkey and Armenia, it is a country with contrasting mountains and valleys that seem to have found their parallel in the inner landscape of Kancheli’s music. Virtually all works of this composer consist of a single movement with the duration of ca. 25 minutes, and they all move between the extremes of profound, melancholic meditation and fiercely pulsating energy. Just like Schnittke, it...

Giya Kancheli is the author of seven symphonies plus a series of very sad compositions featuring the viola, a lamenting choir and a supporting orchestra. His homeland Georgia is very different from other Russian regions. The climate, food and customs are very different from everything the Westerners know about the post Soviet Union. The country borders the Black Sea, Turkey and Armenia, it is a country with contrasting mountains and valleys that seem to have found their parallel in the inner landscape of Kancheli’s music.
Virtually all works of this composer consist of a single movement with the duration of ca. 25 minutes, and they all move between the extremes of profound, melancholic meditation and fiercely pulsating energy.
Just like Schnittke, it turns out that Kancheli likes to work with major stylistic contrasts, but he has a more strict and directed approach, as a result of which his compositions are rather reminiscent of the ritualistic world of Pärt.
(Source: Musicalifeiten.nl)

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