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Born in Japan in 1977, Yoko Kikuchi began the piano at the age of 4 and received her musical training at the Toho Gakuen High School of Music, where she studied with Kiyoko Tanaka and Hidemitsu Hayashi. After graduating in 1996, she continued her studies in Italy with Franco Scala, Antonio Ballista, and began studying the Fortepiano with Stefano Fiuzzi at the "Incontri col Maestro" International Piano Academy in Imola.
Yoko Kikuchi has won prizes in several international competitions, including the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, but it was her first prize at the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg, 2002, after which she gave two highly acclaimed performances at the Salzburg Festival with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, under the direction by Ivor Bolton, that firmly established her as a young artist not to be missed
Conductors she has worked with include Lawrence Foster, Hubert Soudant, Dennis Russell Davis, Pedro Halffter, Christian Mandeal, Anton Nanut, Gunter Pichler, Hanns Martin Schneidt, Saulis Sondeckis, Michiyoshi Inoue with orchestras such as the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, Robert-Schumann Philharmonic, Chemnitz, Slovenia Radio Television Orchestra, Hellas Orchestra of Patras, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Ensemble Orchestral Kanazawa, Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. Concerto performances in recent months include Beethoven's Concerto No. 1 with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and Christoph Eberle, Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 2 with the Japan Philharmonic under Tetsuro Ban and Ravel's Concert for the Left Hand with Michiyoshi Inoue and the Osaka Philharmonic. In November 2005 she will play the Mozart Concert for Three Pianos K 242 with Rani Calderin and the Orchestra Pomeriggi Musicali at the Teatro dal Verme.
Since her debut solo recital in Milan in 1997, Yoko Kikuchi has since been a regular guest throughout Europe and in her native Japan, performing on the piano and pianoforte. In addition, Ms. Kikuchi has also received high praise for her recitals in music festivals such as the Mozart -Matinee of Salzburg Festival, Festival Opera Barga, the Madeira Music Festival, the ‘From Bach to Bartok' festival in Imola and the Sintra and Leiria Festivals in Portugal. Her concerts in 2004 with the Leipzig String Quartet were similarly well received by both critics and audiences. In October 2005 she performed at the Kitakyushu International Festival in Japan, and other forthcoming recitals include those in Ravenna, Roverto, Riccione, Udine, Karuizawa and Maebashi.
Ms. Kikuchi has recently released her debut CD featuring Mozart: Concerto for Piano No. 21 K 467, under Ryusuke Numajiri and Orchestra Ensemble Kanezawa, and Sonata No. 11 k 331 ‘Alla Turca.'
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