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photography by giuseppe cardullo

Rachel hosts Chopin Talk at the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw

WORLD PREMIERE
Rachel performs her commission of a new work composed by Marc-André Hamelin

MUSIC VIDEOS

ABOUT

First prize winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, American pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo is captivating audiences around the globe with her "heartfelt, courageous and perfect playing" (Lübecker Nachrichten) and as a "thrilling" artist with "the highest artistic claim who demonstrates a perfection of technique and precision down to the smallest motivic detail" (Die Rheinpfalz).

Following her orchestral debut with the Chicago and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras, Rachel has performed as both soloist and chamber musician at the Bachfest in Leipzig, Royal Castle in Warsaw, Salle Cortot in Paris, Musikverein in Vienna, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, International Chopin Festival in Duszniki-Zdrój, Poland, Tivoli International Festival in Denmark, Bergen International Festival in Norway, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and Alice Tully Hall, David Geffen Hall, and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York.

She is a recipient of the Gilmore Young Artist Award, a Davidson Fellow Laureate of the Davidson Institute of Talent Development, and the Salon de Virtuosi Grant. Additionally, she earned scholarships from the National YoungArts Foundation and Rohm Music Foundation, has won numerous top prizes at the U.S. National Chopin Competition in Miami, and has a finalist diploma at the 15th International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.



Born in Washington, D.C., to Japanese-Korean parents, Rachel began her studies with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago. After spending her childhood in Japan, she returned to Chicago to pursue a musical life, playing chamber music and violin in her high school orchestra, appearing on From the Top on NPR, and studying with Kum-Sing Lee in Vancouver, Canada.

Rachel earned both a Bachelor's and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School. She received numerous awards, including the Arthur Rubinstein Prize, Chopin Prize, Sanders/Tel Aviv Art Museum Prize, Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship, and twice as the first prize winner at the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. Her mentors, Yoheved Kaplinsky, and Joseph Kalichstein, guided her through her studies. She then went on to pursue a Professional Studies Diploma with Richard Goode at Mannes College of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree under the tutelage of Gilbert Kalish at Stony Brook University. Rachel also had the privilege of studying with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.

She received guidance in master classes from Robert Levin, Emanuel Ax, and Sir András Schiff at Carnegie Hall's Professional Training Workshops. Aspen Music Festival and School, Juilliard ChamberFest, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, Music@Menlo, Perlman Music Program's Chamber Music Workshop, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Chamber Music Encounters" enriched and expanded her musical horizons.

Rachel believes in sharing the transformative power of music with the broadest possible audience to foster cultural engagement and human connection. As an educator, she is passionate about mentoring the next generation of young musicians and has taught master classes worldwide. She was engaged as a live stream host for the Eighteenth International Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the U.S. National Chopin and Cliburn Junior International Piano Competitions. In February 2021, in a Virtual Special Event for The Gilmore, Rachel presented the world premiere of Marc-André Hamelin’s Suite à l'ancienne, which she commissioned with funding from the Gilmore Piano Festival.

Rachel’s music is available on all streaming services and through her YouTube channel: www.YouTube.com/RachelNaomiKudo.

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Last update: February 2024

PRESS

“PROMISE OF A WORLD CAREER”
“At the piano evening on Sunday evening in the Lübeck MuK, the young pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo was seen. In 2018, the American was the winner of the 21st Johann Sebastian Bach Piano Competition in Leipzig and had made herself noticed with many other awards. Now she performed in MuK’s new concert series and quickly conquered the audience. 

Rachel Naomi Kudo was completely in her element in Beethoven's late six Bagatelles op.126 and the Diabelli Variations op.120, in which Beethoven finds his most personal voice and whose technical challenges fill many pianists with timidity. Heartfelt and with admirable elan, and the highest perfection in the playing, Rachel Naomi Kudo left behind a promise of a world career. Courageous and perfect playing.”

-DK, LüBECKER NACHRICHTEN

”KUDO EARNS A STORM OF APPLAUSE”
“The US-American Rachel Kudo, this year’s winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, caused a stir. She performed the Italian Concerto, which Bach originally wrote for harpsichord, brilliantly. Full of joy in playing and with the utmost precision, she created the baroque sound elements and artistic ornamental figurations, as well as the change between solo and orchestra in the instrumental concert, which was imitated in the composition. Kudo brought the majestic main theme and the lyrical secondary theme of the first movement in a lively way. Empathetically, she presented the second movement, in which the melody reminds us of an emotional, richly ornamented aria. The American pianist was completely in her element in the virtuoso third movement, full of lively, sparkling spontaneity. She received cheers and thunderous applause for her magnificent performance.”

-Elisabeth Klaper, Südwest Presse

“Rachel Naomi Kudo from the USA played Bach with a pearly attack, brought Beethoven's Bagatelles Op.126 with great depth in the interpretation and took on the Sonata Op.111 with a long breath and great calm. A convincing performance.”

-bernhard hartmann & guido krawinkel, general-anzeiger bonn

“MUSICAL AND THRILLING”
"The immense wealth of famous quotations about Bach alone confirms his exceptional position in music history: "He should not be called Brook, but Sea" or "Bach, this ocean is infinite and inexhaustible in its richness of harmonies and ideas - he is the founding father of harmony": as was Beethoven's worship. From Bach’s collection of ‘Clavier-Übung,’ which is in no way to be understood as a teaching work, Rachel Naomi Kudo started with the French Overture with the highest artistic claim.

Precise Down to the Smallest Detail
A majestically striding Overture is followed by a collection of stylized courtly dances such as Courante, Gavotte or Sarabande. These dances with diverse tactical metrics, different accentuations, and shifting emphases require a high level of characterization, and finely sculpted ornamentation (of figurations and decorations). In doing so, Rachel Naomi Kudo not only demonstrates a perfection of technique and precision down to the smallest motivic detail, but she also shines with the distinction and clear execution of various ornaments and virtuoso renderings. Even then, the structure and melodic substance of the short movements always shimmered through. As if carved in stone and with sharp, clear contours, these melodic and rhythmic peculiarities in the suites stood out against each other, resulting in a clearly structured and organically flowing Bach picture, as if out of the textbook of historical performance practice.

Very musically and with rousing energy, she then went in to the "Italian Concerto" of the named collection. One can only succeed in this rapidity and brilliance, yet permeating clarity and transparency, when interpreters feature these articulate subtleties and enormous playing-technical skills. The quietly flowing Andante revealed the softest gradations of her ability to chisel and shade in the finest nuances.

The presentation of the piano cycle "Carnaval" by Robert Schumann, the cycle of more than 20 miniatures in the form of romantic character pieces, was also convincing in all interpretative matters, technically, sonically as well as dynamically and agogically fulfilling. Schumann came to the letters – that inspires the progression of the different keys and inspired the basic motive, through his adoration for Schubert’s waltzes and further homages. The difficulty lies - similar to the Bach Suite - in the art of respectively capturing and mediating the peculiarities: changes of measure and key, metric shifts and, in Schumann especially, a wealth of timbres through a highly differentiated attack. These were the strengths of the pianist who presented herself impressively here.”

-reiner henn, die rheinpfalz

“KUDO ASTOUNDS IN FONTANA FESTIVAL”
"Both as a soloist and chamber player, Kudo proved an extraordinary artist ready for a successful professional career. Playing at the First Baptist Church, on the splendid Fazioli grand piano, Kudo displayed stunning virtuosity…” FULL REVIEW

-C.J. Gianakaris, kalamazoo gazette

"KUDO plays with talent, and also... cheerfully. Listening to her is a great pleasure. In each successive stage she convinced us more and more that… she will achieve a great deal as a Chopinist.”

-jan popis, the warsaw voice

“KUDO, THE IMPACT OF PERFECTION”
"It's almost hard to believe - in spite of the incessant proliferation of excellent young pianists - that Kudo could have achieved, in only 19 years, a miracle of flawless technique and expressive versatility which she demonstrated in her recital Sunday afternoon in Gusman Concert Hall at the University of Miami.

Kudo obtained the second prize in last year's National Chopin Competition - and one wonders how brilliant the first prize winner must have been - in any case, for her crystalline execution of the Beethoven Sonata Op.2 No.2 in A major, and her spectacular tour de force in the most difficult passages of the Barber Sonata, Op.26, played in the first half of the concert, one could appreciate that Kudo possesses a versatility that many don't accomplish without long years of experience.

This was a natural talent, and we had no doubt that we were before one of those natural pianists, who, without discrediting hard work, possess special qualities that permit them to capture with sensibility and profundity the keys in the phrasing and the spirit of the distinct composers. Her Beethoven was well-balanced and clean, an exercise in classicism worthy of opening the night. On the other hand, the Barber would have filled the composer with pride. Not a single note was lost in the dazzling and almost impossible to play passages, the reason for which this extraordinary work of the piano literature of the twentieth century is almost outlawed in concert halls.

The second part of the concert was dedicated to two works from the vast wealth of Chopin's output. The Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante Op. 22, and the Third Sonata in B minor Op.58. The first, like its name indicates, opens calmly but introduces melodic phrases that the second part of the work develops in a more rhythmic context. This work shows the tendencies of Chopin, the nostalgic, the intense, an invitation to dance...

The second work is one of grand architectural breadth: four movements with their corresponding changes of tempi and states of animation. In the masterful hands of miss Kudo, this exquisite structure came through. In the pompous and elegant "Allegro maestoso" and the vibrant "Scherzo", and in the "Largo" with all its perfumes of impossible memories, and the brilliant festive "Finale" with cascades of chords and passages that take your breath away. It was an extraordinary ending by an extraordinary pianist who promises to become a legend in this new century.”

-daniel fernandez, el nuevo herald

PHOTOS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY susi belianska
Hair and makeup by fabio lococo