The rather unusual program explores artistic creation through the lens of human relationships — marital, familial, and pedagogical. By pairing works of Robert and Clara Schumann, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, and Dmitri Shostakovich with Galina Ustvolskaya, the program traces how intimacy, rivalry, influence, and resistance shape the act of composition. Rather than a sequence of contrasting pieces, the evening forms a narrative about the dialogue between two creative voices within each pair — sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant, always revealing.

The opening Schumann group highlights the extraordinary musical and emotional symmetry between Robert and Clara. Robert Schumann’s (1810 – 1856) Piano Sonata No. 1  Op. 11 stands among his most impassioned early works: volatile in form, rich in cyclical motives, and charged with the psychological intensity that would become his signature. Schumann later told Clara, that the sonata was “a solitary outcry for you from my heart..in which your theme appears in every possible shape”. Clara Schumann’s (1819 – 1896) Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 2,  is a significant piano work on a theme from Robert’s piano cycle Bunte Blätter, Op. 99, showcasing her distinctive style through a theme and seven variations (eventualy and famously inspiring Brahms to compose his own variations on the same piece). It highlights the close musical relationship between Clara and Robert, where she transformed his thematic material into a new work, a common practice in their collaborative artistic lives.

 The central Mendelssohn section offers a parallel — another pair bound by deep musical affinity. Felix Mendelssohn’s (1809 -1847) Songs Without Words, Op. 19 exemplify the refined lyricism and formal balance that made him one of the defining pianistic voices of early Romanticism. Fanny Mendelssohn’s (1805 – 1847) Songs Without Words, Op. 8, by contrast, reveal a more exploratory, harmonically searching sensibility, demonstrating the artistic stature long overshadowed by her brother’s fame. Together, their works expose two facets of a shared musical language, shaped in close proximity but articulated with distinct expressive priorities.

After the interval, the atmosphere shifts dramatically. Shostakovich’s (1906-1975) Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor, Op. 61 is a wartime work of fractured forms and stark introspection, probing the limits of the piano as a medium for existential testimony. It prepares the ground for a confrontation with a radically different voice: Galina Ustvolskaya’s (1919-2006) Piano Sonata No. 6. A former student of Shostakovich — though their relationship remains a topic of speculation and scholarly debate — Ustvolskaya forged an uncompromising idiom defined by asceticism, density, and spiritual extremity. Her music does not merely stand beside Shostakovich’s; it challenges and contradicts it, offering a counter-tradition of remarkable intensity. Her sixth and last piano sonata is a physically violent work, full of fortissimo clusters. As musicologist Maria Cizmic explains, “It opens up a performance space in which a pianist feels pain, foregrounding the concrete bodily acts and sensations of suffering at a time when the violence of the USSR’s past continued to be contested.”

At the center of this dramaturgical arc stands Giorgi Gigashvili, whose interpretive imagination unifies the program’s disparate worlds. His playing brings structural clarity, rhythmic vitality, and emotional directness, allowing these interwoven relationships — artistic and human — to emerge with renewed resonance.