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Mari Kodama
Mari Kodama was born in Osaka, Japan and began playing the piano at the age of three with her mother. Her family moved to Europe when she was six. Eight years later she entered the Conservatoire National Superieur de Paris aged 14, where she studied piano with Germaine Mounier and chamber music with Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux. Three years later, she obtained the premier prix and completed her studies with honours (cycle de perfectionnement) at the age of 19. While still a student, she won prizes at several international competitions (including Jeunesse Musicale de Suisse, Viotti - Valsesia, Citta di Senigallia, and F. Busoni in Bolzano).
After completing her studies, she was immediately invited by the London Philharmonic Orchestra to play Prokofiev?s Piano Concerto No.3, followed by a recital at the Southbank Centre. Gramophone reviewed her later recording of this work under conductor Kent Nagano as follows: "Mari Kodama's tone is beautifully shaded and she makes a lovely, liquid sound? piano playing of a distinctive sensitivity?It all adds up to a genuinely fresh, and refreshing view?" Since then, she has given concerts in Europe, the USA, Singapore and Japan, where she made her orchestral debut in Tokyo under Raymond Leppard in Ravel?s Piano Concerto in G.
Major orchestras with which Mari Kodama has performed include the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Norddeutsche Rundfunk, Dutch Radio Chamber Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, American Symphony Orchestra and the NHK. She has played under the baton of conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Frans Br?gen, Raymond Leppard, Kent Nagano, and Bernhard Klee. She has also performed at the festivals in Salzburg, Evian, Aix-en-Province, Montpellier, Verbier, Aldeburgh, Ravinia and Aspen, as well as at the Hollywood Bowl (USA), Midsummer Mozart (USA) and Saito Kinen (Japan) festivals.
Her chamber-music activities include concert tours with Mstislav Rostropovich. In Summer 2003 her own festival in San Francisco was launched, in which she performed with the Trio Plus from Vienna. Mari Kodama has also worked with pianists Tatiana Nikolaeva and Alfred Brendel.
Highlights of recent seasons include recitals at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Bard Music Festival (playing Schoenberg) and the Midsummer Mozart Festival (with Mozart Piano Concertos in San Francisco, Berkeley and Stanford). In her New York recital debut, Mari Kodama played in Carnegie Hall. She also performed in the Ravinia Festival?s Rising Stars Series and at the Aspen Music Festival, and gave concerts with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic (at the Hollywood Bowl) and the San Diego Chamber Symphony. In autumn 2000, she began her second complete Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle in Los Angeles and Pasadena. The Los Angeles Times said of her Beethoven: "She has an elegant touch, an admirable sense of quality and a rhythmic scrupulousness. She thinks in keyboard colors and has a rainbow of tints at her disposal. There is a feline grace to her phrasing. Also feline is the way she will pounce on a percussive passage -- suddenly, boldly, precisely, as if for the kill -- and from that comes her most dramatic playing. Her tone [is] rich and gorgeous." Audiophile Edition said of her recent recording of Beethoven Sonatas for PentaTone Classics, "Ms. Kodama?s playing is superb throughout ? her timing, phrasing and intonation are absolutely drop-dead gorgeous ? every aspect of the playing here is absolutely of the highest order. [This] may be the very best recording of solo piano music I own."
Purchase recordings by Mari Kodama