Sun, Feb. 22, 2026, 11.00 am | Elbphilharmonie, Grand Hall
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TIME PLAY SIX: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH / GIORGI GIGASHVILI: Concerto in D minor for harpsichord (piano), strings and basso continuo BWV 1052 I. Allegro / II. adagio / III. OSCAR PETERSON: Bach Suite (orchestration by Giorgi Gigashvili)
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Claude Debussy: Prelude to “L'après-midi d'un faune” (The Afternoon of a Faun)
Leonard Bernstein: „Symphonic Dances“ ("West "Side Story")
Dirigent: François Leleux
Klavier: Giorgi Gigashvili
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg
François Leleux – conductor and oboist – is renowned for his irrepressible energy and exuberance. He is currently Artistic Partner of Camerata Salzburg. Leleux was previously Artist-in-Association with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and has featured as Artist-in-Residence with orchestras such as hr-Sinfonieorchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Berner Symphonieorchester, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife.
In the 2021/22 season, Leleux returns as conductor to Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, BBC Scottish Symphony, Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, Chamber Orchestra Europe, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Nederlands Chamber Orkest and Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. He has previously conducted orchestras such as Oslo Philharmonic, HR and WDR Sinfonieorchester, Orchestre National de Lille, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and the Sydney, Gulbenkian, Swedish Radio and Tonkünstler orchestras.
As an oboist, Leleux has performed as soloist with orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio and the NHK symphony orchestras. A dedicated chamber musician, he regularly performs worldwide with sextet Les Vents Français and with recital partners Lisa Batiashvili, Eric Le Sage and Emmanuel Strosser.
Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2000, Giorgi studied the piano without ever thinking about a
professional career as a pianist. He is passionate about the folksongs of his country, which he
likes to arrange and sing. He even participated in the Georgian ‘The Voice’ and won the
competition at the age of thirteen! However, he continued his musical training at the Paliashvili
Central Music School for Gifted Children and entered the Tbilisi State Conservatory in the class
of Revaz Tavadze.
In April 2019 he won First Prize at the Vigo International Piano Competition, with Martha Argerich
as president of the jury. In 2021, he received the Hortense Anda-Bührle Special Prize at the
Fifteenth Géza Anda Competition in Zurich; this enabled the Géza Anda Foundation to
recommend him for participation in the KlavierOlymp in Bad Kissingen, where he won First Prize
and the Audience Prize. In March 2023, Giorgi celebrated another great success: He won the 2nd
Prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition and was also awarded the
Junior Jury Prize, the Prize for the best chamber music and 5 out of 6 audience prizes. In spring
2024, he received the Terrence Judd-Hallé Award.
His debut album “Meeting my Shadow” was released in April 2023 with Alpha Classics. The album
has been highly acclaimed since its release: It reveals his full palette of colours; featuring
Scarlatti, Beethoven, Scriabin and Messiaen.
In the season 2024/2025, Giorgi will perform with the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, the
Munich Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra as well
as with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin (amongst others). Chamber music highlights of the
season include recitals at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the
Konzerthaus in Vienna and at the Wigmore Hall in London.
Giorgi is combining his career as a classical pianist with his passion for electronic and
experimental music: “Georgian on my mind” is a program featuring singer Nini Nutsubidze and is
connecting Georgian folk songs with classical pieces by e.g. Chopin or Bartók. “Serious Music”
featuring Nikala is a one-of-a-kind stage experiment where classics meet modernity, a synthesis
of academic and electronic music. Both projects, as well as the world premiere of Giorgi’s self-
composed work for orchestra, piano and electronics can be heard as part of his fellowship at the
Beethovenfest Bonn in September 2024.
In 2023/24, Giorgi has been studying with Kirill Gerstein at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler
in Berlin; before, he studied with Nelson Goerner in Geneva for 2 years. He is supported by the
Lisa Batiashvili Foundation and the Géza Anda Foundation. Since 2023, he is supported by Bayer
Kultur’s stArtacademy and the Orpheum Foundation for the advancement of young soloists.
Giorgi has also been selected a BBC New Generation Artist 2023-2025 and has been nominated
ECHO Rising Star for the season 2025/26.
The Philharmonic State Orchestra is Hamburg’s largest and oldest orchestra, looking back on many years of musical history. When the “Philharmonic Orchestra” and the “Orchestra of the Hamburg Municipal Theatre” merged in 1934, two tradition-steeped orchestras combined. Philharmonic concerts have been performed in Hamburg since 1828, artists such as Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms being regular guests of the Philharmonic Society. The history of the opera company goes back even further: Hamburg has been home to musical theatre since 1678, even if a regular opera or theatre orchestra was only formed later. To this day, the Philharmonic State Orchestra has embodied the sound of the Hansa City, a concert and opera orchestra in one.
During its long history, the orchestra encountered great artist personalities. Apart from composers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, such as Telemann, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Mahler, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, since the 20th century chief conductors such as Karl Muck, Joseph Keilberth, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Aldo Ceccato, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gerd Albrecht, Ingo Metzmacher and Simone Young have shaped the orchestra’s sound. Renowned conductors of the pre-war era such as Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Karl Böhm and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt gave brilliant performances, as did outstanding conductors of our times: suffice it to mention Christian Thielemann, Semyon Bychkov, Kirill Petrenko, Adam Fischer and Sir Roger Norrington.
Starting with the 2015/2016 season, Kent Nagano has taken on the position of Hamburg’s General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonic State Orchestra and the Hamburg State Opera and since June 2023 also its honorary conductor. In his first season Kent Nagano initiated a new project, the Philharmonic Academy, focusing on experimentation and chamber music. In 2016, Nagano and the Philharmonic toured South America, followed by concert tours to Spain and Japan in 2019, and in the spring of 2023, the Philharmonic State Orchestra made its debut at New York's Carnegie Hall under his direction, which was acclaimed by audiences and the press. Since 2017 Kent Nagano and the Philharmonic State Orchestra have continued the traditional Philharmonic Concerts at the new Elbphilharmonie, for which they commissioned Jörg Widmann to compose the oratorio ARCHE, which was given its world premiere during the hall’s opening festivities. The concert recording has been released by ECM, for which Widmann received the OPUS KLASSIK as Composer of the Year 2019, and ARCHE was performed again in 2023 to great acclaim.
The Philharmonic State Orchestra offers approximately 35 concerts per season and performs more than 240 performances per year at the Hamburg State Opera and the Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier, making it Hamburg’s busiest orchestra. The stylistic bandwidth covered by the 140 musicians, ranging from historically informed performance practice to contemporary works and including concert, opera and ballet repertoire, is unique throughout Germany. Chamber Music has a long tradition at the Philharmonic State Orchestra: what began in 1929 with a concert series for chamber orchestra has been continued since 1968 by a series of chamber music only.
In 2008 Simone Young and the Philharmonic State Orchestra won the Brahms Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society. The orchestra has recorded the complete Ring by Wagner as well as the complete symphonies of Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner – the latter in the rarely-performed original versions – as well as works by Mahler, Hindemith and Berg, and has released DVDs of opera and ballet productions by Hosokawa, Offenbach, Reimann, Auerbach, J.S. Bach, Puccini, Poulenc and Weber.
The members of the Philharmonic State Orchestra feel equally beholden to Hamburg’s musical tradition and responsible for the city’s artistic future. Since 1978 the musicians have been participating in education programmes in Hamburg’s schools. Today, the orchestra maintains a broad education programme, including school and kindergarten visits, patronage for music projects, introductory events for children and family concerts. The orchestra’s own academy prepares young musicians for their professional careers. The Philharmonic’s musicians thereby make an equally enjoyable and valuable contribution to tomorrow’s music education in the music metropolis of Hamburg.
The Philharmonic Concerts of the Hamburg State Orchestra become ZeitSpielen and transcend the boundaries of the ordinary: In this concert, Giorgi Gigashvili's interpretation of Bach's music and music inspired by Bach will be heard - not only as a pianist, but also as a composer. The third movement of the harpsichord concerto will be replaced by his orchestration of the jazzy Peterson Suite, inspired by the original. We encounter Bach today as a mirror of the past and at the same time, through Gigashvili, as part of the here and now! This musical performance without fear of contact opens up new perspectives on our musical culture, our way of thinking and being, our way of receiving music.
“My relationship with Bach is about as old as my relationship with traditional Georgian music. Even as a child, I felt very strongly drawn to both. What I intend to do with the third movement of the D minor harpsichord concerto comes from my innermost being, from my heart.” GIORGI GIGASHVILI
Venue: Elbphilharmonie, Grand Hall, Platz der Deutschen Einheit 4, 20457 Hamburg
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