Lisa Batiashvili, or Elisabeth Batiashvili (born Elisabed Batiashvili in 1979) is a Georgian violinist, the daughter of a violinist father and a pianist mother. Her father was her first teacher from age four. Her family left Georgia in 1991 and settled in Germany. She later studied at the Hamburg Musikhochschule. In 1995, she was a prize winner in the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition.
Batiashvili was one of the first of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, from 1999 to 2001. She has collaborated in chamber music and concerto performances with cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Steven Osborne, both BBC New Generation Artists exactly contemporary with Batiashvili. She has also worked with a later BBC New Generation Artist, Ashley Wass, in recital. She made her BBC Proms debut in 2000.
In 2006, Batiashivili was the soloist in the first performances in the United States (August, world premiere) and in Sweden (October, European premiere) of the viloin concerto of Magnus Lindberg, which Lindberg wrote for Batiashvili. Batiashvili and her husband, oboist Francois Leleux, commissioned from Giya Kancheli the double concerto Broken Chant, which they premiered in February 2008 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London. She also commissioned a solo violin encore from her compatriot Igor Loboda for solo violin, "Requiem for Ukraine".
Batiashavili became artist-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic for the 2014-2015 season. In parallel, she has an artist residency with the NDR Symphony Orchestra. Her commercial recordings include the Lindberg concerto, as part of her recording contract with Sony Classical, which she signed in 2007.
Batiashvili and Leleux reside in Munich with their two children. She plays a 1739 Guarneri del Gesu violin lent to her by a private collector.
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