In just a few days, Lisa Batiashvili and Igor Levit will be honoured with the city’s highest and most important award. In 2025, the Emperor Otto Cultural Foundation will be celebrating the 10th award ceremony and the 20th anniversary of the prestigious prize. In this anniversary year, two artists will be honoured for the first time for their unyielding commitment to dialogue, peace and humanitarian values in Europe.
Lisa Batiashvili was born in 1979 in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and came to Germany with her family at the age of eleven. As the youngest participant in the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki, where she won second prize, Lisa Batiashvili caused an international sensation in 1995. In 2003 she was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Prize at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and in 2006 the Beethoven Ring at the Bonn Beethoven Festival. Since then, she has won two MIDEM Classical Awards, a Choc de l’année and three Echo/Opus Klassik prizes. In 2018, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
The German-Georgian virtuoso has long been one of the most important and sought-after violinists of her generation. She is praised by critics for her virtuosity, sensitivity and charismatic charisma. Lisa Batiashvili maintains close links with many first-class orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. She regularly works with the most renowned conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Yannick Nézét-Séguin, Alan Gilbert and Sir Simon Rattle and performs in cities such as New York, London, Prague, Bratislava, Salzburg, Madrid, Rome, Paris and Berlin.
In 2021, she founded the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation to support highly talented young musicians in her native Georgia. The foundation awards scholarships to music students who are at the beginning of their professional artistic careers. Lisa Batiashvili assumes social responsibility and uses her popularity to draw attention to grievances and find a remedy.
For her outstanding commitment to peace, freedom, tolerance and understanding for the benefit of society, Lisa Batiashvili has been awarded the Emperor Otto Prize 2025 by the city of Magdeburg.
