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Mao Fujita is set to release a brand new album of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas cycle / Pianist Magazine

Sony Classical has released Mao Fujita’s eagerly-anticipated studio recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas in a five-album CD box set and digitally. A significant undertaking for any pianist, this project also marks the rising piano star’s Sony Classical debut. Described by The Times of London as “a musician of tremendous versatility and taste, with a poetic sense of pulse,” Fujita signed an exclusive contract with Sony Classical in 2021, following a solo debut at the Verbier Festival performing the same set of works.

Of the series, the French magazine Toute la Culture praised Fujita for his sense of joy that came through in “interpretations of incredible intimacy.” Upending the image of Mozart’s music as written down fully-formed and without correction, Fujita approaches these sonatas with the understanding that Mozart, a pianist himself, often improvised during his own performances of the works and treated the scores as starting points for improvisation and embellishment. “He didn’t always play what he wrote,” the pianist explains of the composer. “When I play Mozart’s sonatas only according to what he wrote, it’s quite boring. We can, instead, do something special.” Toute la Culture commended this as well: “With a sound of pure, astonishing beauty, he inserts imaginative riffs here and there, but always with a respect for the classical style.”

Mozart’s 18 piano sonatas offer a unique musical biography of the composer. Written between 1774 and 1789, they span nearly all of his adult life: the earliest dating back to when he was 18, the last composed just two years before his death in 1791. So far in Fujita’s career, they’ve also become an integral part of the increasingly in-demand pianist’s own musical biography: He took silver medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019 in part thanks to his performance of the Piano Sonata No. 10 (K. 330). This, in turn, was inspired by Vladimir Horowitz’s 1986 recital in Moscow where, at the same hall used for the Tchaikovsky Competition, he played the same piece. Years later, it was watching the video recording of this concert (also released by Sony Classical) that inspired Fujita to take up piano.

His success in Moscow, building on several awards won in 2017 (while he was still a student) at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, catapulted the Tokyo-born Fujita’s career. He has given recitals at Fondation Louis Vuitton as part of the organization's “New Generation Piano” series as well as at major international festivals including the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, and Verbier, Tsinandali and Riga-Jurmala Festivals, among others. Fujita has been invited to appear in recital at London’s Wigmore Hall at the end of the 22/23 season to perform the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas interspersed with sets of Variations over five concerts. Recent orchestral debuts have included the Royal Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, and Filarmonica della Scala Orchestras under the batons of Vasily Petrenko, Christoph Eschenbach, and Riccardo Chailly, respectively. Fujita reunites with Chailly for his debuts at the Lucerne Festival this Summer and with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Spring 2023. Other upcoming orchestral highlights include debuts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Marek Janowski and with Konzerthaus Berlin under Eschenbach.

Pianist Magazine writes….Japanese pianist Mao Fujita is set to release a brand new album of Mozart Sonatas on 7 October. The pianist announced the news at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. Fujita announced the news during his Verbier Festival concert on 21 July. The album – a studio recording of The Complete Mozart Piano Sonatas cycle – will be released on Sony Classical. The Festival also saw the premiere of a new short film from Sony Classical about Mao Fujita and his musical journey.

The Complete Mozart Piano Sonatas will be out on 7 October 2022

The recording features Mozart's music exactly as written without correction. Fujita believes that Mozart often improvised during his own performances of the works and rather treated the scores as starting points for improvisation and embellishment.

The Sonatas have become a staple in the pianist's repertoire in recent years. He took the silver medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019, in part thanks to his performance of the Mozart Piano Sonata No. 10 (K. 330), inspired by Vladimir Horowitz’s 1986 recital in Moscow of the same piece and the recording of which initially inspired Fujita to take up the piano.

 Photo credit: ©Nicolas Brodard

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