Mitsuko Uchida
Boyd Tonkin
When a pianist directs from the keyboard, the result can be a sedate affair: a matter of minimalist time-keeping while the soloist shows his or her fancy moves. Not so with Dame Mitsuko Uchida and her long-term partners, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Clad in a sort of blue magician’s gown over severe black, Uchida – who has just turned 70 – stood to conduct, vigorously, the opening passages of last night’s two Mozart concertos at the Royal Festival Hall. Even when safely back on her stool, she frequently indicated every sign of wanting to leave it as her arms – when not otherwise occupied – Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mitsuko Uchida continues her world tour of Schubert sonatas with two concerts for the home crowd, this the second of her appearances at the Festival Hall. The tour coincides with Uchida’s 70th birthday, but the years have done little to diminish her technique. And Schubert is an excellent choice, arguably her strongest suit – perhaps a joint first with Mozart – though her many recordings and performances in the past are little preparation for her always unpredictable approach.Schubert’s piano sonatas make demands on the pianist, both in technique and interpretation, and every player Read more ...
David Nice
When you've found your living ideal for Schubert's sonatas - Elisabeth Leonskaja, surely - it can be a challenge to stay open-minded and welcome another take on the profundities. Mitsuko Uchida didn't make it easy for herself or us at the start by plunging into the technical challenges of the fierce C minor Sonata, first in the miraculous final trilogy; nor did she hint more than fleetingly at the sublime to come. But come it did, in a journey to the plains of heaven intensively walked in the hypnotic G major masterpiece, D894, with Uchida's unique personality defining the route.She doesn't Read more ...
David Nice
"Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart" might have been the marketing tag to sell out this first concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2017-18 season (despite student and free under-18s take-up, the Usher Hall still wasn't full). "Dvořák Symphony No. 8" was in fact the headline, marking the launch of Robin Ticciati's last series as the SCO's hugely successful Principal Conductor. As it turned out, Berlioz's early Overture Les Francs-Juges offered the real shake-up of the evening, the shock of the new as good as a contemporary work – better than most instances – with an unusual complement for Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Mitsuko Uchida specialises in elegant, if uncontroversial, interpretations of core Austro-German repertoire, yet she’s never predictable, and every performance is full of unexpected insights and welcome surprises. Mozart and Schumann stand at the far ends of her repertoire, and between them demonstrate what makes her playing great: In Schumann we hear subtlety of tone, gradually shifting moods and psychological depth, and in Mozart an unbridled joie de vivre, elevated, through her consummate artistry, to the highest of artistic ideals.Mozart’s Piano Sonata in C, K 545, was really just Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Leonard Bernstein once said that his favourite piece of Stravinsky was whatever one he happened to be listening to. I have a similar feeling about Mozart piano concertos: I love them all in their turn, and last night I heard Mitsuko Uchida bring two of the greatest of them to life, as pianist and director, alongside the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.The template is clearly the successful “Beethoven Journey” in which Leif Ove Andsnes spent four years touring the Beethoven piano concertos with the MCO, culminating in three scintillating Proms in the 2015 season. Combining two concertos with a Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
The justification for playing Brahms with a chamber orchestra is well rehearsed. In fact, I have on my desk a Telarc boxed set of the four symphonies “in the style of the original Meiningen performances”, recorded by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under the visionary Sir Charles Mackerras in 1997. Then, as now, the idea was to lighten the texture and give greater prominence to the woodwind. By drawing back the dense curtain of string sound, the light could shine through and Brahms’ contrapuntal delicacy be revealed.That was 18 years ago: a long time in the history of an orchestra only just Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
After the broad, lyrical Shostakovich Tenth Symphony Andris Nelsons presented at the Proms last week, Vladimir Jurowski’s austere and unrelenting Eighth came as a shock. The two performances were equally fine, but at opposite ends of the Shostakovich spectrum. And the effect was intensified last night by a particularly terse programme, delivered with unrelenting intensity. No easy listening here, but plenty of raw emotion, and everything delivered with utter conviction and to the highest musical standards.Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture set the tone. Here, and throughout the evening, the string Read more ...
David Nice
If you were one of the world’s most famous pianists, you’d surely want to explore the masterpieces among Lieder with the great singers. Having chosen less than wisely for Schubert, as some of us thought, Mitsuko Uchida has now found a powerful voice for Schumann, that of German soprano Dorothea Röschmann: opulent, many-hued, maybe a size too big for the fickle Wigmore Hall acoustics but always impressive.It just depends on what you want in this repertoire. Last year in the same hall the slimmer-voiced Anne Schwanewilms gave a riveting interpretation with Roger Vignoles of Schumann’s Op. Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
While the Berlin Philharmonic's progress through London with Simon Rattle has grabbed the column inches away from the rest of the capital's classical music offerings this week, a delightful mostly Ravel programme from the Philharmonia should not be passed over. It presented the G Major Piano Concerto with Mitsuko Uchida as exemplary soloist, and an imaginative semi-staging of the “lyrical fantasy” L'Enfant et Les Sortilèges, a work too rarely performed, and which is hard to beat for sheer magic.Both of these compositions are the result of long creative processes. They are lovingly crafted Read more ...
David Nice
You know what to expect from a standard programme of masterpieces like this, led by two great performers in careful control of their repertoire, and those expectations are never going to be disappointed. You’re not going to hear the kind of new-sound Brahms side by side with the more recent end of the German musical tradition – Zimmermann, say, or Henze; that’s the provenance of a fresh thinker like Vladimir Jurowski. But while last night’s kind of old-style concert format may not be with us for ever, we might as well treasure it while it lasts from the likes of Mitsuko Uchida, a pianist who Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida's concentration, calm and grace under pressure are an inspiration. Towards the end of the first piece on her programme, played to a packed Royal Festival Hall last night, the quiet but insistent high-pitched screech of a fire alarm kept going off. Low voices on walkie-talkies at the entrances to the hall were also audible. Whatever the confusion they were sharing with each other, they were failing to lift it. While the noises persisted, Uchida continued the delicate hand-crossing dialogues of Schubert's F Minor Impromptu from the D935 set. She would quizzically hover a Read more ...