When Mitsuko Uchida talks about her art, one term that comes up again and again is 'the right balance'. Her playing has an extraordinary sense of equilibrium: between intellectual rigour and naturalness of expression; between acute awareness of tradition and an eternal quest for discovery; between personal commitment and objective understanding; between beauty and truth. All this would be remarkable in any musician, but is particularly striking when one considers the diverse cultural influences on Uchida's life and career. Japanese by birth, trained in Vienna, she has lived in London for more than two decades and is happy to call herself an Englishwoman.

Most reference books give her birthplace as Tokyo, though she admits this is a calculated simplification.

Actually I decided at the age of 12, when I left Japan, to say "Place of birth: Tokyo". Only Japanese people who take the trouble to look up the details will find that I was really born in a nearby seaside town. My mother had moved out of the city because of bombing during the war. My father was a diplomat working in Germany, and my parents didn't see each other for over five years. After the war they had no money to move back to Tokyo until I was four years old. By that time I had already been given my first piano lessons.

Kindergarten teachers noticed that the infant Uchida would crawl to the piano or harmonium whenever the opportunity arose; at home, she took a close interest in her older brother's piano lessons and was soon taking them herself. She was enrolled in the junior section of a music school. But when she was 12, the family moved to Europe.

Right after my 12^th birthday my parents left for Vienna, and I never looked back. If that had not happened I might never have had a career as a musician.

Within weeks of arriving in Vienna my father had found me a teacher at what was then called the Hochschule für Musik. The lowest age limit in the class was 12, but there was no upper age limit. So I was studying alongside people of 35. Up till then I had been an ordinary kid, whom everyone said was musical, who had gone to a weekend piano school. Overnight I was a music student. But I had no notion of what it meant to be a musician. That didn't change, even after I'd given my first recital, at 14. I went to the first lesson afterwards and my teacher said, "Now you know you are going to be a musician, don't you?" And I said. "No!" He was furious.'

Interview by Brian Hunt