The name Asuka comes from the Japanese and means “the scent of morning.” The young pianist is every bit as special as her name. “Mona Asuka, as a modernist, knows how to keep a cool head. She knows how to use sentiment as just one facet of interpretation instead of wallowing in it over the entire piece,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Her acclaimed début at the Ruhr Piano Festival took place in 2008, when she was still a teenager. With her heartening personality, she was a welcome guest several times last year in our podcast “AnTasten,” where she offered glimpses into her life as a professional concert pianist, we well as into her other great passion: baking. The late Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, her former teacher at the Salzburg Mozarteum, gave her a golden maxim to cherish: “Only perform pieces once you have grasped their ideas!” Mona Asuka combines that wisdom with her own brand of thrilling joy of music-making that will certainly captivate our audience when she makes her 12th appearance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.