Eliso Virsaladze

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Eliso Virsaladze (Eliso Konstantinovna Virsaladze; sometimes spelled Elisso Wirssaladze) (Georgian: ელისო ვირსალაძე; Russian: Эли́со Вирса́лазде) (born 1942) is a Georgian pianist.

She was born in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR to a family of a NKVD officer. She received her first piano lessons at the age of 8 from her grandmother, Anastasia Virsaladze, a well-known music teacher and pianist in the Georgian SSR. She continued her studies in unusual circumstances- with a pianist (name needed) who was incarcerated in a GULAG labor camp of which her father was the commandant. She lated graduated from the Tbilisi State Conservatory, and continued her education as a postgraduate student at the Moscow Conservatory. She studied with Yakov Zak and Heinrich Neuhaus. She won the third prize in the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962 and the first prize in the Schumann Competition in Zwickau in 1966.

Virsaladze has been teaching at Moscow Conservatory since 1967 (She became a professor in 1994) and at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich, Germany, since 1995.

Since 1966, Eliso Virsaladze has given recitals and appeared with major international orchestras under Yevgeny Svetlanov, Kyrill Kondrashin, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Sanderling, and Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Virsaladze enjoys playing chamber music, partnering with Natalia Gutman, the Borodin and the Taneyev Quartets. She participates as a jury member in many international piano competitions. She is a renowned interpreter of Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin, as well as of modern Soviet and Russian composers. LIVE CLASSICS has recorded most of her broad repertoire.

She was awarded the title of People's Artist of the Georgian SSR in 1971, and of People's Artist of the USSR in 1989.