...Brilliance and perfect control of the instrument from the very beginning right through to the last note, combined with insight of expression and appropriate feeling for Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto… (nmz, 29.03.2011)

...Mona Asuka Ott began her recital with a Mozart sonata – a bold challenge especially as this absolutely rules out any hoodwinking when it comes to giving a virtuoso performance. Here she displayed complete mastery, virtually power-driven. The German-Japanese pianist played the opening movement of Sonata KV 310 with metronomic precision enhanced by fantastically smooth runs, for the most part each musically differentiated. She was in her element in the slow movement, making the melody sections really flourish and moulding them in a cantabile style, as if wanting to emulate a sublime operatic aria. Superb pianistic artistry! (Donaukurier/Newspaper, 24.02.2011)

Spectral Secrets in the Dark of the Night

Mona Asuka Ott’s touch has incomprehensible substance and quality about it. She "feels" the path of the instrument down to the very key-bed. Born in Munich in 1991, a pupil of Kämmerling for many years and currently continuing her studies with Bernd Glemser, she tackled Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Minor KV 310 with full-bodied sound, sophisticated left-hand treatment and a great deal of rhythmic drive. Treated with the same somnambulistic ease, Chopin’s Nocturnes in C-sharp Minor and D-flat Major, Op. 27, No’s. 1 and 2 emerged with much deeper introversion. Justifiably so: Through the pianist’s subdued, sombre and mystical rendering, one was aware of the "spirituality" integrated into these "nocturnal pieces", a sanctuary of retreat from the outside world.

There could not have been more contrast at the "Treffpunkt Klassik" event [Classics Rendezvous] staged at Kelkheim City Hall, where Mona Asuka Ott gave a dazzling performance of Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major Op. 53 ("Heroique"). She displayed tonal brilliance and vigour combined with a fluid style and aplomb in the power-driven staccato ostinato bass octaves of the trio section. In Schubert’s Three Posthumous Pieces for Pianoforte D 946 the young musician demonstrated immense lyric sensitivity. The second piece with its expressive melodic style was treated with profound intensity, conjuring up nostalgic memories of blissful moments in life. In Liszt’s "Rhapsodie Espagnole" the pianist sent her hands flying over the entire keyboard, eliciting sparkling trebles, staccato passages and reiterations. This work will always remain what it is: a virtuoso "tour de force". Guido Holze (Frankfurter Allgemeine/Newspaper 29.9.2010)

Oceans of Expression

 […] Whenever Mona Asuka Ott sits down to perform, she creates a cosmos of her very own in which she casts a miraculous spell over her audience.[…] After a short introductory piece, Prelude and Fugue in E Minor Op. 35 by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, she continued with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata in G Major Op. 31/1, a light-hearted composition with an irrepressible sense of humour, a sign of Beethoven’s mid creative period when he was already beginning to suffer from ill health. The pianist succeeded in combining her brilliant technique with virtual oceans of expression and brought the first part of her programme to a crowning climax. Choice morsels followed, culled from the works of Frederic Chopin. The effervescence of the Revolutionary Study contrasted with the dreamlike Nocturne in D-flat Major Op. 27/2 and the triumphal Polonaise Heroique – a musical experience par excellence. After that, she responded with Three Pieces by Franz Schubert (Op. Post. D 946) rarely heard today. Characterized by recurrent major and minor changes, the three works develop a unique mobility, driven along by Mona Asuka Ott with verve and elegance. The pianist continued to keep the audience in suspense before pulling the last trump card from her sleeve: Franz Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole composed in 1864, a masterpiece in velocity in which she gave a dazzling display of sheer artistic wizardry. As if this "murderous tempo" was not enough, she elicited further thunders of applause from her inspired listeners by treating them to an encore rendering of Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Flight of the Bumblebee" (Franconia Music Festival, Doris Huhn)

Lightning Trills

"Competing at the Ruhr Piano Festival held at Hohenlimburg Palace, the young pianist Mona Asuka Ott simply mesmerized her audience  [...] The multiple award-winning student obviously displays a partiality to the works of Franz Liszt. Her programme accorded the same priority to Venezia e Napoli – concluding in an evocative barcarolle – as it did to Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole. Here, Mona Asuka Ott, with tremendous pianistic skills under her command, drew on a rich palette of technical sophistication, this extending to lightning trills through the octaves contrasted by untamed thundering basses. Filled with a deep insight into the composer’s art of creating tonal pictures in the Italian and Spanish idiom, Mona Asuka Ott interpreted these images applying delicate shades of colour carefully selected from the artist’s palette. Performed as an encore, Chopin’s Polonaise Heroique was equally full of temperament. Apart from a fascinating display of exuberance, she testified to her command of softer tonal nuances in a rendering of Franz Schubert’s Three Posthumous Pieces for Pianoforte D 946, enhanced by a natural awareness of the appropriate tempo to adopt in each case to match the charm and character of these compositions" (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung/Newspaper)

Musical Talent with Immense Prospects

... At the BASF Piano Matinee in Ludwigshafen, her programme of works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Liszt and Schubert met with thundering applause. Immediately after the first few bars of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in A Minor (K 175) the audience became clearly aware of young musical talent at work. Mona Asuka Ott executed the sonata with no end of contemplation and deliberation, self-assurance and no trace of uncertainty whatever, qualities that prevailed right through to the close of the recital. This may have appeared astounding for a young lady of her age but does not come exactly as a surprise when studying the career of this whiz kid to date. Appearing on stage at the BASF Community Centre, the pianist began with the four Scarlatti Sonatas, displaying resolute grasp and pronounced brilliance. Her enormously nimble fingers tackled Scarlatti’s cascading runs with perfect balance in addition to crystal clarity applied to the phrasing. What also became obvious (and not only in the Scarlatti Sonatas) were the deeply focused linear contours as well as the transparency and consistency with which the young pianist applied emphasis to secondary voice-parts and contrapuntal figures. [...] No doubt about it, Mona Asuka Ott achieves a great deal and is a virtuoso of high calibre even at her age. She is just as versed as a tightrope executant on the piano, which she admirably displayed in Liszt’s "Venezia e Napoli" and Spanish Rhapsody and again in her showpiece encore, Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Flight of the Bumblebee". The dramatic examples of sombreness and clouding in "Venezia e Napoli" testified additionally to a pronounced sense of tonal appreciation. This also applied to some really convincing passages in the "Three Pieces for Pianoforte", a late composition of Schubert (D 946) conspicuous in the agitated and lively tonal discourse, continually palpable in the first piece, along with supple and eloquent tonal nuances. [...] (Die Rheinpfalz/Newspaper, Gabor Halasz)

Guest Performance at Springe Hunting Lodge

While one should always be sparing with superlatives, what Mona Asuka Ott bestowed on her audience at a recital given on Sunday evening at Springe Hunting Lodge indisputably qualified for the rating "outstanding" in every respect. This applied to each item on the programme: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Rondo in D Major, KV 485, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata Pathètique Op. 13, Robert Schumann’s Papillons Op. 2 and Franz Liszt’s virtuoso bravura piece Venezia e Napoli. The artist displayed both precision of technique and rhythmic style, even putting on a gracious smile as a token of interpretational freedom [...] (Neue Deister Zeitung/Newspaper, Springe)

Classics Before Eight in Munich’s Hercules Hall

[…] Mona Asuka Ott is a champion when it comes to imparting meticulously nuanced tonal colour to her performance. In that respect, her rendering of Liszt’s "Venezia e Napoli" was presented with remarkable homogeneity and apparent ease: full of tenderness and charm at piano level, offset by conviction and esprit when rising to forte […], deliberately avoiding extremes when interpreting marks of expression, creating a distinct smoothness to the ear. (Süddeutsche Zeitung/Newspaper, Andreas Pernpeitner)

Bayreuth City Hall / Electrifying Evening Performance

Mona Asuka Ott Rouses Audience to Enthusiasm in Recent Concert with Hof Symphony Orchestra at Bayreuth’s City Hall

[...] When the young German-Japanese pianist Mona Asuka Ott appears on stage with a well-rehearsed orchestra for a performance of the Norwegian composer’s other celebrated work, the Piano Concerto in A Minor, one becomes aware of a certain elation merging with assertiveness. As the final movement of this through-and-through inspiring work surges ahead, one senses the turbulence that deterred Grieg, a sceptic all his life, from wallowing in tasteless pathos. Mona Asuka Ott and the Hof Symphony Orchestra placed less stress on the apparently romantic elements of the concerto that make it somewhat an offspring of Robert Schumann’s piano concerto. They opted not only for a lavish, refreshing tonal concept; one had the impression of modernity finding its way to the surface. [...] This hardly comes as a surprise considering the sense of family commitment possessed by Mona Asuka Ott within the circle of musical super-talents that are forever discovering ‘modernism in romanticism’. Even the slow movement does not have to dispense with deep emotional qualities. Moving in the same key (D-flat Major) as the "Knight of the Rose", the discerning musician presented an orchestral aria with full mastery of pedal control. The peals of applause received following the piano concerto were so enthusiastic that Mona Asuka Ott saw herself obliged to respond, coming up with an intrepid performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Flight of the Bumblebee" [...] ( Bayreuth, Nordbayrischer Kurier/Newspaper)