Noriko Ogawa ranks among Japan’s foremost pianists and cultivated an enthusiastic audience across Britain and the rest of Europe from the outset of her professional life. She maintains a longstanding presence on the BIS roster, where her recorded work centers on French repertoire, Russian scores by Alexander Tcherepnin and fellow composers, and contemporary pieces.
Born in Kawasaki in 1962, she is distinct from the Japanese soprano Noriko Ogawa-Yatake. Her training began at the Tokyo College of Music, where she studied between 1977 and 1980, after which she attended the Juilliard School in New York from 1981 to 1985 and completed her preparation under Benjamin Kaplan. Early performances remained concentrated in Japan until a third-place result at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1987 drew attention in Britain, prompting her to split her schedule between her homeland and Western venues; she now resides in London. Japanese listeners have encountered her frequently on NHK and Nippon Television, and she has toured with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Signed to BIS, she issued her first album for the label, Rain Tree, in 1996, presenting Toru Takemitsu’s music—an adventurous selection for an emerging artist. Subsequent BIS releases from the late 1990s offered Japanese piano works (Just for Me, 1997), Mussorgsky, Wagner’s transcription of Beethoven, and Harald Sæverud. Her late-1990s account of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3 with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra under Owain Hughes received extensive praise.
Beyond her Japanese schedule, Ogawa has collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic, the Hallé, the Royal Philharmonic, and additional leading British ensembles. European engagements have included the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Finland’s Tapiola Orchestra, and Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. She regularly partners in duo recitals with pianist Kathryn Stitt—recording Delius together—clarinetist Michael Collins, and violinist Dong-Suk Kang. Complete cycles of Debussy’s piano music and Alexander Tcherepnin’s piano concertos appear in her discography. Ogawa frequently commissions new works from composers such as Yoshihiro Kanno and Dai Fujikura, and she serves on the faculty of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has documented Satie’s music on an 1890 Erard piano suited to the period. In 2022 she released Xiaogang Ye: Sichuan Image on BIS, bringing her total recordings past forty.
