by Adorjan Horvát
Giorgi Gigashvili has released Giorgi Gigashvili Plays Prokofiev – With All My Breath and All My Blood. There is a particular danger in approaching Prokofiev’s War Sonatas as vehicles for sheer virtuosity. Their reputation as pinnacle piano works has tempted many pianists into emphasizing aggression at the expense of architecture. What distinguishes Giorgi Gigashvili’s With All My Breath and All My Blood is that he brings more than intensity, but in the way that intensity is shaped, argued, and sustained across a long formal horizon. This is Prokofiev played as constructed pressure to create music that moves relentlessly because it knows exactly where it is going.
From the opening of the Sixth Sonata, Gigashvili establishes his approach. The assertive chordal figures are delivered with weight and clarity. As the movement progresses, his playing never collapses into monochrome force. Contrasts are carefully staged as dramatic blocks are offset by lighter, lyrical responses, each section given its own coloristic identity. The repeated-note figures in the central passages lock into a groove that propels the movement forward, transforming aggression into momentum rather than chaos. One hears the violence associated with wartime composition, but the folkloric hope and anticipation that defines peace, too, creating the tension of the unknown rather than its aftermath.
Technically, the writing often feels like a twentieth-century extension of Lisztian pianism, and Gigashvili meets those demands head-on. His “no prisoners” approach is grounded in control: pulse is maintained, voices are delineated, and the development unfolds with a sense of moving to a defined moment. The final Vivace crowns the sonata. The energy is high, but not through speed alone, but through balance and subtleties; the glissandi are articulated cleanly, pedaling used intelligently to support resonance without blurring, and a perpetual-motion energy that never loses its center of gravity. The result is a performance that affirms the Sixth Sonata’s stature as one of the great twentieth-century piano statements without overstating its rhetoric.
The Seventh Sonata deepens the interpretive narrative. In the Allegro inquieto, Gigashvili captures the restless volatility embedded in the music through an emotional field shaped by anxiety, destruction, and fractured perspectives. Yet it is the Andante caloroso that reveals the pianist’s sensitivity to Prokofiev’s lyric imagination. Folk-like sonorities emerge naturally, not as sentimental relief but as structural counterweights to the surrounding tension. Gigashvili balances Prokofiev’s simplicity and complexity with care. The movement’s internal motion is delivered with an awareness of Prokofiev’s bodily awareness of rhythm.
The famous Precipitato closes the sonata with rhythmic authority. The movement’s internal motion is delivered with an awareness of Prokofiev’s bodily approach to rhythm through his ballet works. The propulsion is fluid and passionate, but never unmoored. This is Prokofiev’s mechanized energy realized with a strong sense of groove.
It is in the Eighth Sonata, however, that Gigashvili’s long-form thinking fully comes into focus. The opening Andante dolce unfolds with just the right amount of romanticization. Dynamic growth is carefully chosen to allow moments to speak without exaggeration. The central sections intensify naturally, and the lighter episodes are touched with care. Gigashvili understands Prokofiev’s textures and accents them in a manner that reflects this. Accents are expressive rather than percussive, and the final polyrhythmic passages land with conviction, making the closing cadence feel earned rather than imposed.
Violinist Lisa Batiashvili joins Gigashvili for Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights. Their balance is instinctive; phrasing and tone align with each musician, reinforcing the music’s nobility without excess. Josef Bardanashvili’s To Gia Kancheli (P.S.) closes the program with lyric intimacy and spaciousness. Batiashvili’s opening lines sing with restraint, while the piano supports with clarity and warmth. The work’s vocalizations add texture without distraction, and the final cadence feels like a fitting summation of the album’s emotional terrain.
Experienced in one uninterrupted sitting, With All My Breath and All My Blood, unfolds as a sustained Prokofiev journey of adventure of twentieth-century energy, motion, and turmoil, shaded by hope and bound together by disciplined interpretation. Gigashvili’s playing captures the composer’s motoric drive, structural rigor, and surprising lyricism with authority. The violin contributions complete the arc, offering human presence after endurance. This is not Prokofiev as spectacle, but Prokofiev as designed experience. This is a testament to form, focus, and the enduring expressive power of Prokofiev’s compositional uniqueness. That’s the short of it!
