“Kodama is widely experienced and her performances of sonatas she calls ‘lyrical islands’ are graceful, fluent and musically transparent. Everything proceeds in a faultless flow of sound.” (Gramophone)
Mari Kodama has established an international reputation for profound musicality and articulate virtuosity at the keyboard. In performances throughout Europe, the United States and Japan, she plays a broad repertoire in a powerful yet elegant style.
In 2011, Mari returns to her extraordinary project of recording the complete Beethoven Sonatas for the PentaTone Label. As well, she appears in concert with the Kyoto Symphony, in duo recitals with her daughter Karin in Munich and Tokyo, and with the Osaka Century Orchestra and pianist Momo Kodama for the world premiere of Jean-Pascal Beinthus’s Double Piano Concerto.
HIGHLIGHTS
In 2010, Ms. Kodama returned to l’Ensemble orchestral de Paris for performances of Mozart’s Concerto No. 10 for two pianos, with her sister and frequent musical partner, Momo Kodama. She performs in Germany with the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra and with the Bayerische Staatsoper, and concertizes in Tokyo, Bad Kissengen, Germany, and elsewhere.
Last season Ms. Kodama performed the Mozart concerto K.595 with the l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on tour with the Japan Philharmonic; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Lan Shui and the Singapore Symphony; joined l’Ensemble orchestral de Paris both in Paris and on tour in Spain for Martinů’s Concerto for Two Pianos; and made a return to the Bad Kissengen Klangwerkstatt, curating a chamber series for young musicians. She performed a recital at Spivey Hall in Georgia, returned to the Folles Journées Festival in Tokyo and led both the Forest Hill Musical Days 2009, the cooperative chamber music festival she founded with her husband, conductor Kent Nagano, in their San Francisco community and the chamber music series at the Orford Music Festival.
Other recent highlights include performances of ▪ the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.3 with the Osnabrücker Symphonieorchester ▪ the Mozart concerti with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Portugal ▪ Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco ▪ the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with David Stahl and the Charleston Symphony ▪ the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 with l’Orchestre symphonique de Sherbrooke and ▪ Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D Major with Mark Wigglesworth and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Kodama also performed the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony, a work she has also performed with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and on tour in the Netherlands. Mari and Momo Kodama have offered the Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos No. 10, at the Festival International de Piano La Roque d’Anthéron, in Japan and throughout the world. Mari Kodama has played with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the NDR Sinfonieorchester, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berkeley Symphony, and Tokyo’s NHK Symphony.
Mari Kodama has presented exceptionally well-received complete Beethoven sonata cycles in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Nagoya, and has appeared in recital in New York, Paris, in Spain, Germany, and much of the U.S. In February 2008 she performed a special program in Vienna celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Schoenberg Center. An active chamber musician, Ms. Kodama’s collaborative work spans her Forest Hill Musical Days festival, which brings together friends and colleagues from the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, l’Orchestre de Paris, and prominent musicians from France, Austria, Russia and the U.S., to her work curating a series for young musicians at the Bad Kissengen Festival, to her annual appearances at Les Folles Journées in Tokyo.
Ms. Kodama is a regular guest with both the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra and the Yomiuri Nippon Orchestra in Tokyo. The Los Angeles Times pronounced her performance of the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto at the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival ‘commanding and electrifying.’ Ms. Kodama has recorded Prokofiev’s concertos nos. 1 and 3 with the Philharmonia Orchestra on the ASV label, and Chopin No. 2 and Carl Loewe’s Second Piano Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra on PentaTone Classics. She is also featured on a new recording of Beethoven piano sonatas. This release, the FIFTH instalment in her traversal of the complete Beethoven sonatas for the Dutch label, features sonatas op. 79 etc. She recently recorded Beethoven Piano concerti Nos. 1-3 with Kent Nagano and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; she is due to record Nos. 4 and 5 in the next few seasons.
BACKGROUND
Ms. Kodama made her New York recital debut at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall in 1995. Her U.S. festival appearances include Mostly Mozart, Bard Music Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, California’s Midsummer Mozart Festival, Ravinia, and Aspen. In Europe she has appeared at festivals in Lockenhaus, Lyon, Montpelier, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, Verbier, La Roque D’Antheron and évian.
Mari Kodama was born in Osaka and raised in Germany and Paris. At the Conservatoire National in Paris, she studied piano with Germaine Mounier and chamber music with Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux. She has also worked with Tatiana Nikolaeva and Alfred Brendel.
