Susanna Ogata

Susanna Ogata enjoys an active performance schedule throughout New England and beyond. Her playing has been described as “warm, witty, responsive, making the tops of phrases gleam” (Gramophone Magazine), and possessing “electrifying energy, awesome technical command and rollicking dialogue,” with one performance named among the season’s best by The Arts Fuse. In a recent performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, The Times Argus praised her “easy virtuosity, but more interestingly a very personal musicality. Her performance felt more like storytelling … with an untethered but effective expressiveness.”

Dedicated to exploring music on historical instruments, Susanna serves as Assistant Concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society and has been Concertmaster of Upper Valley Baroque since 2022. She also serves as Concertmaster for The Henry Purcell Society of Boston and The Bach Project. In addition, she performs regularly with New England Baroque, Sarasa, and Newton Baroque, and has collaborated with A Far Cry and Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble. Recent and upcoming solo appearances include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Connecticut Early Music Festival, St. Ann’s in Kennebunkport, the Maine Early Music Festival, and Upper Valley Baroque. In June 2025, she performed at the international Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany. Susanna has worked with leading early music specialists including Raphaël Pichon, Harry Christophers, Sir Roger Norrington, Bernard Labadie, Jonathan Cohen, and Filippo Ciabatti, among others.

Susanna and keyboardist Ian Watson completed “The Beethoven Project”, surveying and recording the complete Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin of Beethoven on period instruments, receiving praise in such publications as The Boston Globe, where it was distinguished as an eminent release of 2017, BBC Music Magazine, Strad Magazine, Gramophone, and Early Music Review. The New York Times praised them for “elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation. Their performance of the Sonata No. 4 in A minor is darkly playful, their ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata brilliant and stormy.” They completed a two-year residency, called “On Beethoven’s Piano”, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performing and working with students there.

Susanna is currently enjoying early music coaching with music students at the New England Conservatory through the Pratt Residency and Performance Series.

Ms. Ogata’s teachers have included Charles Castleman and Laura Bossert—and Dana Maiben with whom she studied Baroque violin.  She also worked extensively with Malcom Bilson and Paul O’Dette while completing her undergraduate and graduate studies at the Eastman School of Music.