Born in Nagoya in Japan, Etsuko Hirose began studying the piano at the age of three. When she was only six she performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto no.26 with orchestra. After pursuing her studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in the class of Bruno Rigutto and Nicholas Angelich, she has received the guidance of Alfred Brendel, Marie-Francoise Bucquet and Jorge Chamine.
A prizewinner at prestigious international contests such as the Frederic Chopin Competition for young pianists (Moscow), the G. B. Viotti and the Munich ARD Competition, she won First Prize at the Martha Argerich Competition in 1999, which launched her solo career.
She is a guest at such renowned venues as the Herkulessaal in Munich, Kennedy Center in Washington, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, and Suntory Hall and Orchard Hall in Tokyo, and has been accompanied by leading orchestras including the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional Argentina, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Nazionale della RAI Torino, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Synfonia Varsovia, Warsaw National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of such conductors as Charles Dutoit, Marcello Viotti, Pedro I. Calderon, Dmitri Liss, Jacek Kaspszyk, Augustin Dumay, Faycal Karoui etc.
She has also been invited to appear at many festivals, including La Roque d’Antheron, La Folle Journée in Nantes, Tokyo, Warsaw, Ekaterinbourg and Bilbao; the Chopin Festival at Bagatelle, Nohant and in Poland; the Martha Argerich Festival in Japan, Taiwan and Italy; the Festival Radio Classique at L’Olympia in Paris, Lisztomanias, Mozartfest Würzburg, Brussels Piano Festival, Rhodes International Festival, Festival of Piano Rarities in Husum, Festival des Forêts, Festival Piano-Pic, Festival Berlioz and the Festival das Artes in Coimbra (Portugal).
Her performances are regularly broadcast, notably on Arte, France 3, France Musique, Radio Classique, and the NHK.
She has recorded numerous discs for Denon, Danacord and Warner. Her first recording for Mirare is a Chopin recital, then comes a CD devoted to the Liszt and Schumann concerti accompanied by the Orchestre de Pau Pays de Béarn, and in addition recordings of Balakirev and Lyapunov. In 2020 was released, again under the Mirare label, the transcription by F. Kalkbrenner of L.V. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor opus 125 ‘with a final choir on Schiller’s Ode to Joy’ accompanied by the Philharmonic Choir of Yekaterinburg conducted by Andrei Petrenko.
