Thursday Lunchtime Concert – pianist Rieko Makita

Rieko Makita is a multi-award-winning Japanese-Australian pianist based in London. Rieko has performed in prestigious venues across Australia, Japan, Italy, Germany, and Austria, including the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall and the City Recital Hall in Angel Place.

Rieko is currently the Constant & Kit Lambert Junior Fellow and an Artistic Diploma student at the Royal College of Music, supported by the Help Musicians Postgraduate Award and The Musicians’ Company. She currently studies with Dina Parakhina and Sofya Gulyak. As part of her Junior Fellow projects, she has been collaborating with performers and composers and visual artists, and curating concerts that promote music by Japanese and Australian composers.

Growing up in Sydney, Rieko moved to London to pursue her dreams as a performer and to undertake the Master of Performance course at the RCM. She is a recipient of many awards including RCM Scholar Award, Nosward Charity Award and Bliss Trust Scholarship, Busby Musical Award and Henderson Travellers Scholarship. She was selected as the 2021 piano fellow for the Philharmonia MMSF Instrumental Fellowship Programme and became an ambassador for the Benedetti Foundation in 2022. She is a DEBUT Classical Artist, actively working to promote classical music to a wider audience. Rieko have taken part in masterclasses with renowned musicians such as Angela Hewitt, Akiko Ebi, Benedetto Lupo, and Maxim Vengerov.

Rieko is also passionate about composing music. Her most recent works (Sunflower Fields, Oji-chan no tame ni, Quiberee Bay) have been performed at multiple venues, such as the Shoreditch Treehouse in 2022 & 2023 and at the RCM Museum as part of the 2023 FestivALL, by world-class musicians.

Rieko’s upcoming engagements include solo piano recitals at Mosman Art Gallery in Sydney in December 2023. Next year, Rieko will be performing in the Elgar Room at the Royal Albert Hall in February 2024 and St Johns Smith Square in June. As a chamber musician, Rieko will be performing Schubert’s Trout Quintet and premiering of a new work by Australian RCM composer Asher Joyce in February 2024

Programme:

Yoshimatsu:

’Piano Folio… to a disappeared pleiad’ (3’)

Maurice Ravel

‘Une Barque sur l’océan’ from Miroirs (8’)

Claude Debussy

‘Clair de lune’ from Suite Bergamasque (5’)

 

Frédéric Chopin (14’)

Nocturne in B Major Op 62 No 1

Nocturne in E Minor Op 72 No 1

 

Ross Edwards

Sea Star Fantasy (8’)

I. Dreamy and Distant

II. Sprightly

 

Claude Debussy

– Estampes (15’)

I. Pagodes

II. La soirée dans Grenade

III. Jardins sous la pluie