Competition success for HfMT pianists "with a left hand"

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Kenichiro Kojima , master student in the piano class of Prof. Stepan Simonian) has won the competition for the soloist preselection at the Spring Green Music Festival in Kanazawa/Japan.

In May 2020, he will perform Maurice Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand with Maestro Junichi Hirokami and the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini.

Biography
Kenichiro Kojima, born in Tokyo in 1991, has won prizes at numerous national and international competitions: he won 3rd prize at the Pianale Piano Academy 2012 and 3rd prize at the Elise Meyer Competition 2013. He is also a semi-finalist at the Sendai International Music Competition 2013, where he received the Audience Award.

2015 was a year of crisis for the young pianist: Kenichiro Kojima was diagnosed with focal dystonia, which caused him to lose the function of his right hand. This stroke of fate challenged his musicality and he demonstrated not only his ingenuity but also his determined, committed character. He now studied left-hand solo repertoire, some of it arranged by himself.

Despite the setback, Kenichiro Kojima remained active and successfully competed in several competitions with his left-hand repertoire. He received the 1st prize at the ICoM Piano Award 2017 in Hamburg (Germany), the 3rd prize at the Vigo International Piano Competition 2018 (Spain), the 1st prize with two special prizes at the Livorno International Piano Competition 2019 (Italy), the silver medal at the Berlin International Music Competition and the First Great Award with Manhattan Concerts Artists Award at the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition 2019 (USA).

He has also performed at major festivals and concert events throughout Europe and Japan, for example at the Hamburger Klang Werk in Germany, the International Music Festival "Puplinge Classique" and Les Renconters Musicales de Champery in Switzerland, the Laieszhalle (Musikhalle Hamburg) and Kampnagel in Hamburg, the Gasteig in Munich, the Duke's Hall of the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, the Suntory Hall and Opera City in Tokyo and the Spring Green Music Festival in Kanazawa.

Thanks to Kenichiro Kojima's success at the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition in New York, he is now under the management of Manhattan Concerts Artists and made his debut at Carnegie Hall in July 2019. Further debut performances are planned at the Kaunas State Philharmonic Hall in Lithuania (March 2020) and in Milan (May 2020). In July 2019, he performed a solo concert at the Puplinge Classique International Music Festival, which was recorded and broadcast by Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS).

Between 2014 and 2018, he completed a postgraduate course with Eliso Virsaladze at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. He is currently studying at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama with Stepan Simonian. In 2017, he also began training as an orchestral conductor and in the winter semester of 2019, he began studying with Prof. Marc Piollet at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. During the International Mendelssohn Festival 2019 he was selected to conduct the Symphoniker Hamburg in a concert. As an assistant, I am currently gaining experience as a conductor and répétiteur in various opera productions.