| Biography | Mayumi Fujikawa's concert activities have taken her as far afield as South America, the Far-East, Israel, Asia and, of course, her native Japan. Her career in the United States began with a spectacular debut at the Lincoln Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy and has since widened to include appearances with virtually all the major US orchestras including Chicago, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Cleveland with which she appeared with Lorin Maazel at Carnegie Hall.
Other eminent conductors with whom she has worked include Daniel Barenboim, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Lawrence Foster, Kyril Kondrashin, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Sergio Ozawa, Andre Previn, Joseph Krips, Kurt Sanderling, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Walter Weller and Sir Simon Rattle. She has been a guest at Europe's most prestigious international festivals, including Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and the London Proms, in addition to Ravinia, Saratoga and the Tanglewood Festivals in the United States.
Mayumi's earliest training began with her father, a self-taught violinist, at the age of 3. At sixteen she attended the Toho Conservatoire in Tokyo, studying with Hideo Saito, Kenji Kobayashi & Tomoyasu Soh. A scholarship from the Alex de Vries Foundation enabled her to work with Franz Wigy, a pupil of Ysaye, at the Flemish National Music Institute in Belgium. She later studied briefly with Leonid Kogan prior to her Grand Prix Vieuxtemps and her spectacular success in the 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition, where she was described by David Oistrach as "the revelation of the competition".
She has recorded the Tchaikovsky and Bruch Concerti with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Edo de Waart for Phillips, and the complete Sonatas of Prokofiev and Fauré for ASV. The Decca CD release of her Mozart Concerti with Weller and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has received outstanding critical acclaim, and her Mozart series for BBC Television "Mayumi plays Mozart" has been broadcast throughout Great Britain, Canada and the United States.
For many years Mayumi has lived in London, where she is a frequent guest with the London orchestras. It also provides an ideal base for her concert schedule which has taken her to almost every major European capital.
Chamber Music has been an integral part of her artistic life, forming longstanding partnerships with Michael Roll, Jorge Federico Osorio and Richard Markson, in addition to appearences with Andre Previn, Ralph Kirshbaum, Nobuko Imai, Peter Frankl, Craig Sheppard and Gerald Robbins. Future projects include the performance and recording with Michael Roll of the complete violin sonatas of Mozart in 2006 in celebration of the 250th anniversary of his birth. |