Profile: Rika Kageyama
Born in 1964 in Osaka, she started learning the piano at the age of three with Professor Kazue Endo and Shuichiro Endo. She won the first prize in both the primary school and the junior high-school levels in 1974 and 1976 respectively in the Student Music Concours of Japan in West Japan (sponsored by the Mainichi Newspapers). She received secondary and tertiary education at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music where she specialized in instrumental music. While majoring in the piano under Professor Hiroshi Tamura (...*awarded Orders of the Rising Sun from Japanese Emperor...), she also took percussion lessons with Professor Makoto Aruga, and piano, solfege and chamber music with the late Professor Henriette Marie Puig-Roget (who was a Visiting Professor at the time as well as professor Emeritus of the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris). At the 54th music Competition of Japan (sponsored by the Mainich Newspapers and Japan Broadcasting Corporation) she won the third prize in the class of pianoforte, and in the following year, she received the 33rd NCB Classical Music Award (...*highest rank, sponsored by the Japan Cultural Broadcast Corporation..). Performances from the time include joint recital sponsored by the Japan Federation of Musicians, the Morning Concerts organized by the Geidai Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the late professor Akeo Watanabe, among many other joint recitals with percussions, strings, brass, wind instruments and song, and other ensembles. After graduation, she was accepted as the head scholar to study as a graduate student at the University of Washington, USA, where continued piano study under Professor Bela Siki. While maintaining the top position throughout the year, gave the several recitals that all received excellent reviews. The study with Professor Siki continues to this day, as he frequently visits Japan, working on the complete clavier works of Bach and Beethoven. Has numerous repertoires. Also studies rhythm with Professor Makoto Aruga and composition and theory with Professor Yutaka Takahashi and Hiroshi Shimada. Since about the age of fifteen, she has been suffering from an unidentified illness, which, soon after her arrival in America, was diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. Presently, while battling against the illness, she researches on her own methods of performance in search of a deeper level of musical expression.
Translation : Yo Tomita
*
Although battling against the
CFS
and RP &
Bechet (MAGIC
syndrome) currently, she is pursuing her own technical
methods and the depth of the musical interpretation and expression for her
comeback.
From the CD "Rika Kageyama:"
[Listening to Rika Kageyama's CD]
I was immediately struck by the opening of the
Variation by Brahms. I lost my words, for the piano was felling a grand
epic about the music with the most blissful sound. Never in my life have I heard
such a performance of this scale and impact.
Psalm 62, verse 1-2
My soul waiteth only upon God:
From him cometh my salvation.
He only is my rock and my salvation:
He is my high tower; I shall not be greatly moved.
This Psalm perhaps best describes my first impression.
As a performer, I often felt that there were some irreconcilable differences in the classical music of Japan from the Western approaches, especially in the area of musical structure and rhythmic sense. Having spent nearly thirty years in research and practice, I now feel able to distinguish the differences with my ears and body. Rika Kageyama has proved it. Every structure is built from a lower level. Likewise the time axis always drives forward. The sense of pulse, therefore, shifts upwards. In music the kinetic energy continually ascends. Her performance resonated in my whole self. I am very grateful to her for allowing me to experience vicariously this magnificent music.
I must stop discussing further about her performance, for I wish you to listen to it. Music is "there"; that is sufficient. Music receives spirit through the spiritual power of a performer; the performer then gains the salvation through the spirit that resides in music. The highlight is Bach's Chaconne. Everything is purely sublimated.
Makoto Aruga, rhythmist
Professor of music, Tokyo National; University of Fine Arts and Music
*English Translation: Yo Tomita
[Recommendation]
Rika Kageyama belongs to the groups of my most gifted students.
From the very first encounter in the early 80s, I have been impressed by the tremendous potential of this young pianist. When later she arrived in Seattle to undertake studies in my class, this impression became even stronger. She was advancing on rapidly, absorbing numerous repertories, playing in concerts, and winning scholarship competitions. Her playing had the rare balance between music and technique, that impressed everybody, amateurs and professionals alike.
After her return to Japan, we stayed in touch, and on my frequent visits to Tokyo she undertook a profound study on the keyboard works by Bach and the sonatas by Beethoven.
It is my pleasure to write this appreciation on the present record---most of it has been played and recorded in Seattle. In my opinion it is high time the audiences in Japan and elsewhere will hear Rika Kageyama's art.
She was born for the concert stage and has many times proven her fine musicianship, her great technical abilities and her profound understanding of various styles of music. I wish her the very best in this undertaking, and hope that it will open her the big career she deserves.
Cordially,
Bela Siki, pianist
Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington
*English Translation: Yo Tomita
During my forty-three years of tenure as Professor of Piano at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, it seems that I taught more students than I can actually remember. For many of them I only have a distant memory. However, there were some exceptional students whom I can recall vividly. Rika Kageyama is one of them. She was, in my mind, one of a kind. I can recall a few outstanding memories of her that illustrate her characters well, the characters that I came to know so well in seven long years from her days at high school and then continuing at university.
Usually, we, tutors, are expected to choose which pieces our students should play at the exams in order that they may attain better marks. In her case, it was different. It seemed that she wasn't interested in getting a good mark but rather chose the pieces she wanted to play. She was a good student who didn't bother me at all. She was, at the same time, a very motivated student who would study the pieces in such depth -- even non-piano music -- that she taught me on more than a few occasions. Students tend to be very attentive about what I think and fell; they would rely everything on what I say. But she was different: she always faced her piano with her self assertion. This image of her still remains in me.
There is another interesting episode that illustrates how much she care about her teacher. After a lesson one day when she was still a high-school student, I told her that my remaining life would not be very long, which I intended to be a joke. I was told later on that she immediately rushed home to Oskaka (about 500km from Tokyo) without taking anything with her and still in her school uniform. As soon as she saw her mother, she was reported to have shouted, "Oh! Gosh, mother! My teacher is dying with cancer!" Her mother soon phoned me up, and settled the matter then, but while I regretted my carelessness, I was very much moved by the knowledge that there was a student who cared about me so much.
My knowledge of her was such that I was totally shocked and saddened when I learned about her illness -- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, for which an effective treatment is yet to be found -- that she had been suffering from them for so many years. Despite this most unfortunate circumstance, I knew she had been trying her very best in her studies while doing everything possible to fight with the illness, hoping that she would be well one day. Her strengths, both physical and spiritually, are overwhelming. My whole-hearted wish at present is the release from the affliction of her talent, an extraordinary gift that has been recognized by Professor Bela Siki.
Hiroshi Tamura, pianist
Professor Emeritus at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
*English Translation: Yo Tomita
Heroic is the word that, in my mind, best describes the life of Rika Kageyama. Her attitude towards music is as heroic as her confrontation with her long-standing intractable illness.
Her insatiable quest for harmony, counterpoint and analysis needs no explanation. It always astonished me how much and how strictly she would demand from her own piano playing. At the mastering process of this CD, she reportedly rejected the sampling many times over.
I am very much looking forward to listening to her CD; but I must confess that I am slightly worried: in listening to the CD, I might be asked to behave myself....
Yutaka Takahashi, composer
Lecturer at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
*English Translation: Yo Tomita
From the official Reviews by the critics:
<Review
published in The Record Geijutsu, September 2004>
It is a piano
recital that is particularly rich in contents. The opening Variations and
Fugue on a Theme by Handel by Brahms is performed not only with technical
perfection but also with abundant lyricism, distinguishing each variation with
its own expressive identity. There is an intense thread of emotional power that
may explain why her performance attracts the listeners.
The following two
pieces from Die schöne Müllerin are Kageyama’s own
arrangements, which amply emanate her loving care. They are effective, above
all, having just heard the tense Brahms. The Ballade no.1 by Chopin that
follows is a real gem; I was particularly moved by the sheer beauty of her
lyrical, singing melodies. From the Études op. 25 she selected the
last three pieces, the most technically demanding choice. Again she performs
brilliantly by making full use of contrast between energetic sections and
subdued. Following the Grande valse brillante in E-flat, another Chopin
programme, is the Chaconne in D minor by Bach-Busoni. Her musical
approach here has some similarities with the opening Brahms. In her performance,
I can sense the presence of firm musical ideas, which is supported by secure
techniques, leaving a strong impression that she is a well-balanced performer.
The pianist Rika
Kageyama is a graduate of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music,
and subsequently studied at University of Washington under Professor Bela Siki.
From her teens when winning many prizes at competitions, she has been suffering
from a rare disease. This continues to this day, and while fighting with her
illness, she researches into her own style of piano playing. May she find luck!
Jiro Hamada
(trans. Yo Tomita)
<Review
published in FM CLUB, September 2004>
It's
an ambitious program starting with Brahms variation composed of 27 pieces of
music. The performance is stable and solid. Her concentration and will, that can
be called almost tenacious, could be understood, if you know that she is
performing while fighting the serious diseases of CFS and FM. You would wish her
a cure from them as well. She is a leading pianist, who won the third prize at
the 54th music competition of Japan in 1985 and then went to the U.S.
to study under Bela Siki. Your first impression of her as a self-composed
pianist will be surely blown off as you listen to Schubert that follows Brahms.
How expressive it is! You will be reassured by the comment by Siki that she is a
born concert pianist.
Koji
Fukuda
(trans. Miho Inada)