Liana Isakadze was a Soviet and Georgian violinist, conductor, and music teacher. She was born in Tbilisi, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, on 2 August 1946, and died in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 5 July 2024, aged 77. She received her initial musical education at the Central Music School in Tbilisi, where she studied with Leo Shiukashvili, whom she credited as crucial to her artistic formation.
Isakadze appeared with a symphony orchestra at the age of nine and gave her first solo recital at ten. At twelve she won first prize at the Transcaucasian Violin Competition, and in 1961 she received second prize at the All-Union Competition of Performing Musicians in Moscow. She graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1968, studying violin with David Oistrakh, and completed postgraduate study under him in 1970. Her international competition distinctions included first prizes at the Long–Thibaud International Competition in Paris in 1965 and the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki in 1970, as well as third prize at the fourth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1970.
From 1970 to 1994, she was a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic. Between 1964 and 1981, she performed on a Stradivarius violin made available to her by the Moscow State Collection of Musical Instruments; from the mid-1990s, she played a 1678 Guarneri violin provided by a German patron. In 1981 she became artistic director and chief conductor of the Georgian Chamber Orchestra, leading it for 15 years. The ensemble relocated to Ingolstadt, Germany, in 1990, and in 1992 she founded the David Oistrakh String Academy there.
Her repertoire included violin concertos by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Chausson, and Otar Taktakishvili, as well as sonatas by Brahms, Grieg, and Ysaÿe and works by Paganini, Schubert, Wieniawski, Fauré, Sarasate, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Kreisler, Tchaikovsky, Glière, Boccherini, Gershwin, Bach, Hummel, and Bernstein. From 1965 she toured internationally as a soloist, conductor, and chamber musician. She performed at Carnegie Hall, La Scala, the Concertgebouw, and the Salle Pleyel, and conducted chamber orchestras across Europe as well as the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Rome City Orchestra, and the Euro-Classical Youth Orchestra.
Isakadze made numerous television, radio, and compact-disc recordings. She chaired the violin jury of the eleventh International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1998, organized an international violin competition in St. Petersburg in 2003, and gave master classes in Salzburg, Vienna, and Italy. She was honorary director of the G. Isakadze-Spielmann Music Academy in Germany and an honorary professor at the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory in Almaty. A ZDF film, Portrait of Liana Isakadze, was released in 1990, and a commemorative star was installed near the Tbilisi Philharmonic concert hall. In 2015 she gave a Moscow concert in memory of David Oistrakh, performing works by Prokofiev and Saint-Saëns.
Among her honors were the title People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1988 and State Prizes of Georgia in 1979, 1983, and 2002. She was also named an Honorary Citizen of Tbilisi in 2016. The opera singer Khibla Gerzmava acknowledged the strong influence of Isakadze’s personality and artistry on her own musical development.
Organizations
- Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory
- Moscow Philharmonic
- Moscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra
- La Scala
- Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia
- Carnegie Hall
- Berlin Philharmonic
- Concertgebouw
- Georgian Chamber Orchestra
- Malmö Symphony Orchestra
- Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia
- Stockholm Royal Philharmonic Orchestra