Mitsuko Uchida

Versatility Is Her First Name

Mitsuko Uchida would never have made it as an acclaimed pianist if her father's diplomatic career hadn't brought the family to Vienna. Today this remarkable musician is closely associated with the works of three of Austria's most legendary composers.

Mitsuko Uchida talks the way she plays the piano. At times her voice is quiet, then, in a surge of excitement, it suddenly gets louder as she describes with the greatest enthusiasm and detail, a wonderful moment in a piece of music she knows intimately. Meticulously she selects the right words to paint the image she so desperately wants to convey.

A performance by this remarkable musician carries the listener on a temperamental musical voyage. Sonorous soft sounds coaxed from the piano give way to fiery and dynamic passages, full of passion and spontaneity, in an interpretation equalled by few.

By the age of twelve Mitsuko Uchida was already recognized as a special musician. Her father’s career as a Japanese diplomat, brought the family to Vienna. There, Mitsuko spent her youth and studied with some of Europe’s most renowned piano teachers. But, she says with some sadness, her parents had little understanding for a child who wanted to become a professional musician. “ It was such a liberation and joy to be grown up, because then it was just my opinion that counted, my way of playing the piano, and how I played the piano was all my fault and not that of my teachers or my parents.”

Viennese inspirations

When Mitsuko was 16, her parents left Austria to return to Japan. Despite their resistance to the idea, she managed to persuade them to let her stay on in Vienna. “If I had gone back to Japan then, I would have turned to something else,” she says. " The interesting thing is that nobody ever talked about anything that they loved. I would have had to have loved music secretively.”

Mitsuko’s Japanese upbringing presented her with many challenges. “ I never heard the word” love”. It was obligation or it was work. Nobody ever talked about anything that they loved” she says. “That is why I kept to myself the pieces that I loved, because you were not supposed to have pleasure, you were supposed to work. How pathetic that is!”

Vienna was for Mitsuko a direct link to the music and composers she longed to know better. “The Viennese know how music is played.” she says. ”They feel as though they own Mozart, Schubert and Schönberg. I wanted to get to closer to these composers and I realized the rhythm of the language and the atmosphere of Vienna did bring me closer to them.”

Not surprisingly these three composers are also the ones the music world associates with Mitsuko Uchida today. She has recorded all the Mozart piano sonatas and concerti. She won critical acclaim in the 1980s when she directed the English and Scottish chamber orchestras from the keyboard. “It is very hard work, because you have to be extra alert,” she says. "But I know just how wonderful it is to communicate with the other musicians. Mozart is like a conversation with friends.”

Recently Mitsuko Uchida started a new five-year project in which she will once again conduct and play all the Mozart piano concerti. “I have forged a wonderful relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra and this trust is so important for Mozart,” she says. "His music is operatic, full of human situations and humour. It tells stories, pleads, and then forgives. If you can face the musicians with all this… it is wonderful.”