Everyone who listens to a concert with Giorgi Gigashvili – at Bolzano in Italy and Vigo in Spain, at New York or now at Ingolstadt – perceives that the Georgian hurls himself into his art without compromise.

He is just 21. Yet he has been on the stage for 14 years.

In conversation, this young pianist is friendly and serene. But as soon as he touches the keys, you feel his untamed energy. It is fueled by a lifelong connection to music.

“I was literally surrounded by Mozart and Beethoven even in the womb.”

Gigashvili’s mother works as a music teacher in a nursery school. The great classical composers permeated the atmosphere in which he grew up. Little Georgi imbibed it all.

His enormous talent soon began to crystallize.

At the age of six, he had his first piano lessons. One year later he started to work as hard as a professional. To practice for hours.