Avex Recital Series 2019: Nobuaki Fukukawa Comes to Wigmore Hall

Avex's first concert of the year, as part of the Avex Recital Series, will welcome the renowned Japanese horn player Nobuaki Fukukawa - Principal Horn of the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Fukukawa's programme explores his artistic spirit and integrity, highlighting artists who he has had the pleasure of working with or those with deep connections to the musical culture of the UK. Fukukawa feels audiences become too used to hearing the works by Schumann and Beethoven and, through this concert, he will introduce horn pieces that showcase the instrument's charm and beauty, allowing him to demonstrate his originality through his own interpretation of the music.

Nobuaki Fukukawa comments, Horn does not really get the chance to be performed solo, like violin and piano, and so most of its repertoire is not well known. However, horn is a very sonorous instrument, sometimes sounding just like a human voice, and I hope that the audience will get to experience its colourful expressiveness through the pieces I have prepared for this concert.

Fukukawa was the winner of the 77th Music Competition of Japan Horn Division in 2008 and in 2015, he joined the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra as the principal horn player at the age of twenty. His incredible musicality transports audiences to another world with pieces by globally-acclaimed Dai Fujikura, British composer York Bowen and additional contemporary composers.

Fukukawa will be joined by Eriko Takezawa on piano. A winner of the 1984 International Piano Competition in Ostuni, Italy, Takezawa is a professor at the University of Music Karlsruhe in Germany, Musik-Akademie in Basel and at Musikene in Spain.

The second concert in the Avex Recital Series 2019 will be acclaimed soprano Sara Kobayashi on Saturday 2nd March will include Mai by Kunihiko Hashimoto.