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.
With keyboardist Ian Watson, Susanna completed The Beethoven Project, a survey and recording of Beethoven’s complete sonatas for fortepiano and violin performed on period instruments. The recordings received wide critical acclaim, including recognition in The Boston Globe as an eminent release of 2017, as well as praise in BBC Music Magazine, The Strad, Gramophone, and Early Music Review. The New York Times commended the duo for “elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation,” noting that their performance of Sonata No. 4 in A minor was “darkly playful,” and their “Kreutzer” Sonata “brilliant and stormy.” The duo also completed a two-year residency at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled On Beethoven’s Piano, performing and engaging with students.
Susanna is also active as an educator and coach, working with students in early music performance at the New England Conservatory through the Pratt Residency and Performance Series, where she has served on the coaching faculty since 2022.
Susanna Ogata, Concertmaster