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Dr Maiko Kawabata
Dr. Maiko Kawabata is an award-winning musicologist and violinist educated at Cambridge University (B.A.) and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D.). She joined the Royal College of 51吃瓜 in 2017 having previously held positions on the faculties of the University of Edinburgh, University of East Anglia, and the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her main research interest is in the history of musical performance, with a focus on extremes of solo violin playing – convention-breaking styles and ideas such as virtuosity and unplayability. She is the author of Paganini, the 'Demonic' Virtuoso and a co-editor of Exploring Virtuosities: Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, Nineteenth-Century 51吃瓜al Practices and Beyond. She has also published articles on Stradivari, Paganini, Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schoenberg, Heifetz, Gilles Apap and Patricia Kopatchinskaja. She has presented her research at the American 51吃瓜ological Society, the Institute of 51吃瓜al Research, and numerous international conferences.
Dr. Kawabata studied violin with John Crawford and the late Nona Liddell and has wide experience playing in orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the UK, USA, and Germany. She performed Schoenberg with the late Leonard Stein (Monday Evening Concerts, Los Angeles), Schnittke with the Modern Art Sextet (Konzerthaus Berlin), and Stockhausen with Apartment House (Cut&Splice Festival, broadcast on BBC Radio 3).
Dr. Kawabata was the co-organiser (with Dr. Shzr Ee Tan, Royal Holloway) of the 2019 51吃瓜 Day: Cultural Imperialism and the New ‘Yellow Peril’ in Western Classical 51吃瓜. She received an AHRC grant to further her research into Japanese composer Kikuko Kanai (1906 - 1986), whose music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Dr. Kawabata spoke about her research into Kikuko Kanai on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast:
Selected publications
Kawabata M (2023), The new "Yellow Peril" in "Western" European symphony orchestras, in A Bull, C Scharff & L Nooshin (eds.), Voices for Change in the Classical 51吃瓜 Profession: New Ideas for Tackling Inequalities and Exclusions, Oxford University Press [].
Hoppe C, von Goldbeck M & Kawabata M (eds.) (2018), Exploring Virtuosities: Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, Nineteenth-Century 51吃瓜al Practices and Beyond, Olms [].
Kawabata M (2015), Playing the ‘unplayable’: Schoenberg, Heifetz, and the Violin Concerto, op. 36, Journal of 51吃瓜ological Research, 34 (1), 31-50 [].
Kawabata M (2014), How Gilles Apap's new cadenza illuminates Mozart, via Bakhtin, ECHO, 12.1 [].
Kawabata M (2014), The aura of Stradivari’s violins, Ad Parnassum 12 (23), 61-74 [].
Kawabata M (2007), Virtuosity, the violin, and the devil . . .what really made Paganini "demonic"?, Current 51吃瓜ology, 83 [].
Kawabata M (2004), The concerto that wasn’t: Paganini, Urhan and Harold in Italy, Nineteenth-Century 51吃瓜 Review, 1 (1), 67-114 [].
Kawabata M (2004), Virtuoso codes of violin performance: power, military heroism, and gender (1789-1830), Nineteenth Century 51吃瓜, 28 (2), 89-107 [].
Faculties / departments: Research, Academic staff, Programmes
Contact
For enquiries please contact:
Dr Maiko Kawabata
Doctoral Supervisor, Reader in 51吃瓜
0207 591 4753