Exclusive: Khatia B. gets new management
mainKhatia Buniatishvili, the Georgian superstar pianist, has decided to grow her profile in English speaking territories by signing up with Stefana Atlas and Doug Sheldon at Cami for UK and North American management.
Khatia, 29, has a huge public and media following in France and Germany. It’s not yet clear if she will retain her original Paris management, Jacques Thelen, for Europe. She has played rarely in the US in the past three years and was previously with Lang Lang’s agency, CAMI Music, which did not know what to make of her.
This is a fresh start with two experienced and dedicated agents.
Ms. Buniatishvili doesn’t need a manager, she needs a teacher. She toured in the US in 2014, and played with Orpheus at Carnegie hall 10 months ago – the reviews were poor.
La Verita gives her good advise. If she follow there’s hope for Khatia. She told me that Oleg Maisenberg was her only teacher in the West. I know him from his teen and not a good musician. But he has prestige of prominent teacher in Vienna [redacted]
What rubbish is written here about Khatia and Oleg not being taught correctly and not being a good musician.
Amazing……
Their first task should be to rewrite the hideous biography on her website…
Looks like the new management advised her to start wearing clothes. When did she decide to cover up and be taken seriously? The first comment, however, was right- they should have sent her off to the practice room first.
You see this in the youtube comments as well, after more or less any classical musician. “This is not so good I think his bowing technique very poor”. “No true emotion just fast technique here”, and so on. I guess it feels good to speak in a judgmental and scolding fashion? I don’t really understand the impulse.
Very often, of course, it’s mixed with how women ought to behave, since these commenters have issues. “She should not move her head so it is showing off and very immature.” “She do not respect audience or the music if she think so much display of breasts is necessary to keep attention”.
Don’t know what it is about classical music that draws this crowd.
What you say is certainly true on YouTube and other sites where the audience is very “mixed”. And it’s true of women, who in my experience are held to a higher standard pretty much across the board.
At the same time, Buniatishvili’s performances are very uneven. She has a spectacular command of the instrument AT TIMES. I heard her give an overwhelming performance of the Brahms Second Concerto, one to rival Richter’s (and I don’t say that lightly). And yet another time she played the Precipitato from Prok 7 and it was a holy mess, notes going all over, blocks of chords hit wrong.
And it’s not like one would say this of all women, taking just Argerich and Yuja Wang as comparisons. They are always both prepared and technically dead-on.
Khatia Buniatishvili has not played in the US for three years – we are informed. I wonder who was that person – that ravishing young woman, playing beautifully a Mozart concerto and then, with volcanic passion and truly incomprehensible dexterity, the Prokofiev’s sonata’s “Precipitato”, as an encore, last February at Carnegie’s? What was Norman Lebrecht smoking lately?
The information came from her agent. I will adjust it accordingly.