Liana Isakadze (violin)

USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra, Alexander Lazarev

Firma Melodiya presents an album of the remarkable violinist Liana Isakadze.

At the age of nine, while a pupil of the Tbilisi music school for gifted children, Liana Isakadze performed with a symphony orchestra for the first time, received first prize at the Trans-Caucasian Competition of Violinists at twelve, and two years later the second prize at the All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in Moscow where she was allowed to participate despite her young age.

She was then admitted to the Moscow Conservatory without examinations, where she studied under David Oistrakh. Isakadze was awarded a Grand Prix of the at the Marguerite Long and Jacques Thibaud International Competition in Paris in 1965, the first prize at the Jean Sibelius International Competition in Helsinki and the third prize at the 4th Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 1970.

Liana Isakadze’s recordings of the concertos by Jean Sibelius and Arnold Schoenberg, made in the early 1980s with the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by young maestro Alexander Lazarev (he subsequently headed the Bolshoi Theatre), unveil the brightest features of the violinist’s performing style.

While the first of the concertos is very popular among all famous musicians (the jury of the Sibelius Competition awarded her a special prize for its performance), Schoenberg’s concerto is an example of Liana Isakadze artistic courage – she was and still is the only violinist in this country who included this work in her repertoire.