Miharu Ogura - Ogura Plays Stockhausen (2023)

This 2 CD album features Japanese pianist Miharu Ogura’s jaw-dropping rendition of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke I–XI, for solopiano, recorded live at MONOPIANO festival 2021. Includes a 20 page booklet with an essay by Robin Maconie, former Stockhausen pupil and author of the book “Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen 1950–2007”.

Pianist and composer Miharu Ogura (b.1996) began her piano studies at age 3 and has been interested in complex rhythms and atonal elements since childhood. At 19 years old, Miharu learned of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen while participating in a masterclass focused on the Klavierstücke held by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich in München. After this experience, she took every possible opportunity to learn a new Klavierstücke. In 2017 she participated in the Stockhausen Courses in Kürten. Following her successful performance of Mantra in 2018, she made her first attempt to play Klavierstücke I–XI in Tokyo, Japan, in 2021. Later the same year, she performed the pieces at the MONOPIANO festival in Stockholm, Sweden – the same performance that's featured on this album.

Miharu was born in Tokyo, where she also graduated from Toho Gakuen College. She’s currently based in Frankfurt, Germany and performs in a variety of music scenes as a soloist and ensemble performer.