Profile

Kotaro Fukuma was born in Tokyo in 1982. He began his piano studies at the age of five in Japan. After finishing high school in 2001, he entered Paris Conservatory (Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris), where he studied piano with Bruno Rigutto and chamber music with Marie-Francoise Bucquet. Kotaro currently studies with Klaus Hellwig in Berlin University of Arts (Universitat der Kunste Berlin). He also participates regularly in the Como International Piano Academy
in Italy.

Kotaro has won prizes at national and international competitions including the 6th prize in the 1997 Gina Bachauer Young Artists Competition (Utah, USA), the Gold medal in the 1998 PTNA competition (Tokyo, Japan), and 2nd prize in the 2002 Helsinki(Finland) International Maj Lind Piano Competition.

In 2003, Kotaro won the First Prize and the Chopin Prize at the 15th Cleveland International Piano Competition, the awards of which included his debut recital at Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall) in New York City. Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times,"Mr. Fukuma has found a way to avoid the pressure toward interpretive cautiousness that has made the competition circuit so deadly. He played the Brahms’s F minor Sonata with a weight, articulation and coloristic flexibility that touched on an often overlooked aspect of Brahmsian sensibility, a sense of grandeur couched in terms of sober modesty. And he painted the two Andante movements with a gently seductive tone, complete clarity of texture and the kind of dynamic gradation that creates the illusion that a work is a breathing organism.”

Since then, Kotaro has given nearly 40 concerts in the U.S.A. due mainly to his winning the Cleveland International Piano Competition. In the meantime he started his career in Europe and Japan.

He played in some prestigious festivals such as Duszniki Chopin Festival in Poland, Piano aux Jacobins, Piano en Valois, Nuits de Sucquet and Annecy Music Festival in France, Musical Septembre and Les Sommet du classique in Switzerland, and 100 Pianist series in Japan. In September 2006, he made a concert tour in South Africa and was highly acclaimed. He will be re-invited in 2008.　

His media appearances include France 2 in France, TVP 3 in Poland, YLE in Finland, WNYC, WCLV and WPR in USA and NHK, TBS and CLASSICA JAPAN in Japan.

Kotaro has played with a number of orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony, the Lincoln Symphony, the Canton Symphony, the New Japan philharmonic and the Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, under the conductors Jajha Ling, Louis Lane, Hannu Lintu, Laurence Smith, Paul Nadler, Charles Peltz, Francois-Xavier Roth, Eva Ollikainen, etc..
He has more than twenty concerti as a concerto repertoire, and his repertoire is as full of variety, from classical to modern, as his solo repertoire.

He has made the national and world premiere of music by some composers, such as Toru Takemitsu, Mutsuo Shishido, Renaud Gagneux, Thierry Escaich, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Seongju Oh. He also plays various chamber music: Duo with violin, cello, and clarinet, Piano Trio, Piano Quartet, Piano Quintet and vocal accompaniment.

His debut album (works by Schumann) was released on Naxos Label in the summer of 2005 and received favorable reviews in various music magazines: Monde de la Musique (4 stars), Bayern 4 Klassik, Classic Today (9/9), Ongaku-gendai (Recommendation), Record Geijutsu.

His second album, the integral of Piano solo works by Toru Takemitsu, was released in the summer of 2007, which coincided with a Takemitsu Project carried out in the USA, France, South Africa, and Japan. He also recorded Iberia suite by Albeniz and his other pieces on a Japanese classical music label.

(updated on March 4, 2008)

Kotaro's personal website