Momo Kodama
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Pianist |
Though Momo Kodama was born in Osaka it was in Europe that she grew up and studied music, first in Germany then in France where, at the age of 13, she entered Germaine Mounier’s class at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique, Paris. It was there that she won her first piano and chamber music prizes. She then went on to perfect her style with such eminent pianists as Murray Perrahia, Andras Schiff or Tatiana Nikolaieva. It was at the Munich ARD International Competition in 1991 – where she was the youngest winner – that she became known to the musical world.
Having established an extraordinary career in Japan performing with the foremost orchestras (the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra , the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra) she has, since her US debut in 1991 with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, been invited again and again by many European and American orchestras. These include the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra,the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the RAI Orchestra, Turin, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre de la Fondation Gulbenkian, l’Orchestre National de Montpellier, the Orchestral Ensemble of Paris, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg etc…
Beginning with Seiji Ozawa who had noticed her ‘remarkable talent’, Momo Kodama has worked with the world’s most prestigious conductors such as Rudolf Barshai, Charles Dutoit, Eliahu Inbal, Valery Gergiev, Gary Bertini, Lawrence Foster, Zdenek Macal or Sir Roger Norrington. It was with the latter that she performed the Martinu Double Concerto with her sister Mari Kodama and Ensemble Orchestral de Paris at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Momo Kodama is equally in demand to perform recitals and as a chamber musician (where she is a much sought after partner). She is invited to the most prestigious halls and festivals in Europe and the United States – the Wigmore Hall, London; Tonhalle Zurich; the Marlboro Festival; Chopin at La Bagatelle; La Roque d’Antheron; Verbier; Lucerne; Berlin Festival; Festival d’Automne in Paris; Davos; the Tivoli Festival (Copenhagen); Enesco Festival (Bucarest); Settembre Musica-Torino; les Folles journees de Nantes; Tokyo and Schleswig-Holstein. She forms a remarkable piano duo with her sister and some of her memorable encounters have been with Steven Isserliss, Nobuko Imai, Yuzuko Horigome, Augustin Dumay,and Dimitri Makhtin. Since 2004, Momo Kodama has been invited each year, with great success to the Folles Journées in Nantes and Tokyo, where the subtlety and insight of her playing Clementi, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Janacek or Mussorgsky has won over the public. In 2008 she performed with five other leading pianists in a series of concerts presenting the complete works of Frederic Chopin in different Japanese cities. This project was repeated in Poland, France, Spain and Brazil throughout 2010.
A large part of Momo Kodama’s repertoire is consecrated to contemporary music – she has performed works by Pärt, Takemitsu and especially Messiaen whose Turangalila Symphony she studied with Yvonne Loriod. At Madame Loriod’s request, in 2006 she premiered Messiaen’s Fantaisie pour violon and piano (written in 1933 but never performed in public) with Isabelle Faust at La Roque d’Anthéron Festival. In November 2007, Momo was a jury member of the prestigious Concours Olivier Messiaen, before devoting much of her time in 2008 to a large Messiaen project in Japan for which she received several awards and that series of concerts was named the best for that year by Most Classic magazine.
Lichtstudie 3 by Jörg Widmann has been dedicated to Momo. She premièred it at the Lucerne Festival. Echo by Ichiro Nodaira, dedicated to the Momo/Mari duo has been performed in Berkeley and Berlin.Toshio Hosokawa’s piano concerto Lotus under the moonlight, was given its world premiere with the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg and Jun Maerkl in the sprimg of 2006, followed by its American premiere with Kent Nagano. finally premiered in Japan with Seiji Ozawa and his Mito Chamber Orchestra. She also premiered Hosokawa’s remarkable quartet Stunden Blumen at the 2008 Lucerne Festival. It was repeated in Vienna, Hamburg, Paris, at La Grange de Meslay and at the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival. Later, with Jörg Widman and and the Freres Capucon it was performed in Japan.
She will play it again at the Meije festival during the summer of 2011.
One of the key moments of her 2011-2012 season will take place in Montpellier, where she will play the concerto for two pianos by Martinu, alongside her sister Mari.
After two highly acclaimed recordings – Debussy in 2002 and Chopin in 2003 – Momo released a magnificient version of the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus by Olivier Messiaen which the magazine Classica compared with the remarkable performances by Yvonne Loriod, Roger Muraro and Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
A new Triton album dedicated to the Catalogue d’oiseaux also by Messiaen, which she performed in its entirety at the Festival de la Roque d’Anthéron came out in January 2011.
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