Asagi Nakata

Asagi Nakata
The evolution of Asagi Nakata’s international career has been shaped by her consistent success in major competitions, by her studies at London’s Royal Academy of Music and, within the context of a repertoire that ranges from Bach to living composers, by the legacy of Franz Liszt.

Her passion for contemporary music and successful collaboration culminated with composer Bojan Vuletić in the album Visions of Excess in 2023 and, now, an album of works (including world premieres) by Roberto Rosso.
She served on the jury of the 6th International Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Weimar, having won first prize in its Young Pianists section in 2009. The winner in 2019 of the International Liszt Ferenc Competition in Budapest, she was selected for the finals of the 2020 International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht, subsequently cancelled as a result of the pandemic. Asagi was nevertheless awarded fourth prize, determined by votes from audiences worldwide. In 2021, as recipient of a scholarship from the Adam Gyorgy Foundation, she attended the New York Franz Liszt Festival. Her latest successes have included first prizes at the Gothenburg International Competition (2022) and Jean Sibelius International Competition (2022), and third prize at both the Montecatini International Competition (2022) and Paderewski In Memoriam International Piano Competition (2021).
In the UK Asagi has performed at all the leading concert halls in London, including Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, St. James’s Piccadilly and Steinway Hall, and on BBC Radio 3, and she has made concerto appearances with the Southbank Sinfonia and Finchley Chamber Orchestra. Her engagements around the world have taken her to Japan, Germany, France, Italy (including a highly successful appearance at the Orbetello Piano Festival), the Netherlands, Belgium. Russia, Poland (as a guest performer at the Duszniki International Chopin piano festival), Hungary, Czechia (notably with the Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra of South Bohemia), Serbia, Croatia, Canada and Morocco.
With her mother as her first teacher, Asagi began learning the piano at the age of three, going on to study with Benjamin Kaplan and later with Ian Jones at the Royal College of Music Junior Department. She subsequently pursued both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the Royal Academy of Music, where her teachers were Christopher Elton and Tatiana Sarkissova. A Constance Bastard Memorial Scholar, Asagi graduated with Distinction in 2018 and was awarded the prestigious Francis Simms Prize in recognition of her outstanding studentship and the exceptional standard of her final recital. She has received further guidance in masterclasses from pianists such as Dmitri Alexeev, Stephen Hough, Lang Lang, Steven Osborne and Yevgeny Sudbin, and continues to learn under the tutelage of Grigory Gruzman. As a committed teacher herself, Asagi works with students of all ages, also regularly holding masterclasses.