Georgian pianist Mariam Chitanava grew up between two of the world's great piano traditions, and she has never treated them as opposites.
Born into a Georgian family in Moscow, Mariam began her musical studies at the Lev Oborin Children's Music School with Olga Filatova, and went on to the Central Music School with Farida Nurizade and the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Elena Richter, also taking masterclasses with Nikolai Demidenko and Ralf Gothóni. In 2022 she joined the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, studying with Prof. Milana Chernyavska in the Banco Santander Foundation Piano Chair.
Schools like these are known for producing pianists of formidable technique, and it would be easy to assume that something human is traded away along the way. For Mariam, the opposite is true. Her playing joins the tonal strength and technical command of the Russian school with the carefully shaped phrasing and expressive freedom of central and southern European traditions. She builds each interpretation as a shared act of communication with the listener: warmth, conflict and the search for beauty, carried across with honesty.
Santa Catalina Classics programme booklet showing Mariam Chitanava’s portrait and biography
That approach has taken her from First Prize at the Alexandre Scriabin International Piano Competition in Paris and Second Prize at the Gonzalo Soriano Competition in Alicante to the preliminary round of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2025. As featured pianist of the Museo del Prado's Pinceladas Sonoras series she gave 303 performances across 101 days, alongside more than fifteen solo and chamber recitals at Madrid's Club Monteverdi and appearances at Centro Botín. This October she played to a sold-out hall at the Santa Catalina Classics festival in Gran Canaria; the festival's programme booklet, with her portrait and biography, is pictured above.
Now based in London, Mariam teaches children and young students in English, Russian, Georgian and Spanish, and works with singers and instrumentalists on accompaniment, chamber music and recital projects.