Aimi Kobayashi

One of the most acclaimed pianists of her generation to emerge from Japan, Aimi Kobayashi had already accumulated extensive stage experience before reaching her teenage years. She reached the final round of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, joined the Warner Classics roster, and built a worldwide performing career that took her to prestigious halls such as Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Salle Cortot in Paris, and Svetlanov Hall in Moscow. In 2024 Warner Classics issued her recording of Schubert piano works.

Born Aimi (EYE-mee) Kobayashi on September 23, 1995, in Ube, Japan, she began piano studies at age three. Until 2007 she remained in her hometown, working from age eight onward with instructor Yuko Ninomiya. During that period she quickly distinguished herself in national contests, becoming the youngest-ever recipient of the PTNA Piano Competition prize, which she captured consecutively from 2001 through 2004, and winning the National Music Competition of Japan in 2005. Her 2004 appearance with the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra was followed in 2005 by a Salle Cortot recital broadcast across Europe and Japan. Before her teens she had already performed at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2005, 2006, and 2008, and had collaborated several times in Moscow with conductor Vladimir Spivakov. In 2011 she entered the Toho Gakuen School of Music as its first recipient of a full scholarship and continued collecting competition victories in Japan; that same year EMI Classics released her album of Beethoven piano sonatas.

International placements soon accelerated her trajectory. Third prize at the 2012 Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, preceded her 2015 advance to the final round of the five-year-cycle International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Although her programs encompass diverse repertoire, she has since been widely recognized as a Chopin interpreter. Engagements have included the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic of Liège, and Japan’s principal orchestras. She pursued further training at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute under Meng-Chieh Liu. Her first Warner Classics release, a 2018 collection of solo works by Chopin and Liszt, was followed in 2021 by a recording of Chopin’s preludes. The 2024 album presented Schubert’s Piano Sonata in C minor, D. 958, together with the four Impromptus, D. 935.