Momo Kodama - piano

Known for her musicality and expressive virtuosity, Momo Kodama is one of the most engaging pianists of her generation. She can make a big sound with little apparent effort, summon up an attractive and lyrical tone, and dazzle with technical brilliance.

Born in Osaka, Momo Kodama has spent most of her life in Europe. She studied piano at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Paris, later continuing her education with renowned pianists such as Murray Perahia, Andras Schiff and Tatiana Nikolaeva. In 1991 she became the youngest prize-winner of the Munich ARD competition.

Momo Kodama performs regularly with the best orchestras in Japan, Europe and the USA, including the NHK-Sinfonieorchester, Boston Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Orchestra Nationale della RAI. She has played under conductors such as Eliahu Inbal, Valery Gergiev, Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, Sir Roger Norrington, and Lawrence Foster.

Momo Kodama is equally in demand as a recitalist and chamber musician, having performed in the Théâtre du Châtelet, Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zürich, Philharmonie Berlin, and Suntory Hall, as well as at festivals including the Marlboro, Verbier, Lucerne, Davos, Tivoli and Schleswig-Holstein festivals. She can often be heard collaborating with cellist Steven Isserlis, violinists Yuzuko Horigome, Augustin Dumay and Renaud Capuçon, clarinettist Jörg Widmann, and violist Nobuko Imai, as well as her sister, pianist Mari Kodama.

Momo Kodama is a regular performer at the Folle Journée festivals in Nantes, Lisbon, Bilbao, Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, where the subtlety and insight of her playing in Clementi and Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, as well as Janáček, Chopin and Mussorgsky have won over every audience.

A large part of her repertoire is dedicated to contemporary music. In 2002, on the 10^th anniversary of Messiaen's death, she performed his Turangalîla Symphony, Les Visions de l'Amen with her sister Mari, and Les Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus in a series of highly successful concerts. Shse is also the dedicatee of works such as Lichtstudie 3 by Jörg Widmann, which she premiered at the Lucerne Festival, and Echo by Ichiro Nodaira, which was composed for Kodama and her sister. At the Festival La Roque d'Antheréon in 2006, she premiered Messiaen's Fantasie for violin and piano with Isabelle Faust, which had been written in 1933 but never performed.

She premiered Lotus under the moonlight, a Piano Concerto written for her by Toshio Hosokawa, with the NDR Symphony Orchestra and Jun Märkl. She has since performed and recorded the piece with the Mito Chamber Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa. In 2008, she commissioned Toshio Hosokawa's Stunden Blumen, a work with the same instrumentation as Messiaen's Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps, and performed both pieces at the Lucerne Festival with Xavier Phillips, and Caroline and Jörg Widmann. Performances of the work followed in Paris, Hamburg, and Vienna.

Following two notable debut CDs featuring works by Debussy and Chopin (2002), she completed a recording of Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus in 2005, which received critical acclaim in both Japan and Europe. In autumn 2010 she released a recording of Messiaen's complete Catalogue d´oiseaux.

In early 2009, Momo Kadama was noted by the reputable Kenzo Nakajima Memorial Fund for her work to advance contemporary music.

In early 2012, she will record a new CD of works by Ravel and Messiaen on ECM to be released in the autumn. Other highlights of the 2011/12 season include a performance of Martinu's Concerto for Two Pianos with her sister Mari in Montpellier, a series of concerts with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra featuring works by Mozart and Hosokawa, and a recital with violinist Christian Tetzlaff in Tokyo's Toppan Hall.