Born in Osaka, Momo Kodama spent her early years in Europe; educated at a German school, she attended the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris before studying with great masters such as Murray Perahia, Andras Schiff, Vera Gornostaeva and Tatiana Nikolaïeva. In 1991, she became the youngest winner of the Concours International ARD in Munich.
Momo Kodama has been invited to perform with world renowned orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, NDR Hamburg, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Orchestra Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Seiji Osawa, Eliahu Inbal, Charles Dutoit, Lawrence Foster, Kent Nagano, André Prévin and Sir Roger Norrington.
Momo has appeared at prestigious festivals including Marlboro, USA; Verbier, Switzerland; La Roque d’Anthéron, Festival Chopin, Festival d’Automne, Festival Saint-Denis, France; Festival Enesco, Romania; Festival Tivoli, Denmark; Settembre Musica, Italy; and Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; Festival Matsumoto (Seiji Ozawa). In 2011, she performed ‘Momo Kodama Piano Fantasie' in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan, for which she was awarded the Saji Keizo Prize by the Suntory Foundation. 2017/18 avec Festival St.Denis, Récital Philharmonie, Seiji Ozawa Festival Matsumoto et Madrid+ Projet Debussy
Her repertoire extends from the classical and romantic periods to contemporary works, in particular, composers such as Toru Takemitsu, Ichiro Nodaïra, Toshio Hosokawa and Jörg Widmann. In concert, Momo Kodama is a distinguished interpreter of Olivier Messiaen (Turangalîla-Symphonie, Vingt Regards, Catalogue d’Oiseaux), the music by whom she is one of the best exponents in the world, and premiered his Fantaisie for Violin and Piano, with Isabelle Faust in 2006. Recent highlights include performances at the Lucerne Festival, Wigmore Hall and Tokyo Opera City (premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s Etudes), Vienna Musikverein with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, Maison de Radio France (Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France under the baton of Roger Norrington), and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris), Festival Musica and Philharmonie de Paris. She was part of the ‘Claude, es-tu là?’ venture, a tribute to French composer Debussy for the 100th Anniversary of his death, devised and performed with actor Pascal Rénéric and baryton Josep-Ramon Olivé at La Bellevilloise in Paris, and repeated further in France and in China.
A keen chamber musician, she regularly collaborates with violinists Christian Tetzlaff, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Dumay; cellists Mario Brunello, Gauthier Capuçon and Steven Isserlis; her sister, pianist Mari Kodama; the clarinettist Jörg Widmann and his sister, Carolin Widmann, with whom she performed Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps at the Konzerthaus in Berlin in February 2016.
She released her second CD for ECM, featuring Studies Cycles by Claude Debussy and Japanese composer, Toshio Hosokawa in 2017. Prior to this, La Vallée des Cloches, also released by ECM with Ravel’s Miroirs, Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch and Messiaen’s La Fauvette des Jardins, received outstanding acclaim from the New York Times, BBC Music Magazine, Classica (CHOC), Télérama (FFFF). This follows a series of recordings, all highly celebrated, of Debussy, Chopin and Messiaen (Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus, Catalogue d’Oiseaux). June 2018
2018-2019 / 480 words. Not to be altered without permission. We update our biographies regularly. Please destroy all previous biographical material.