Mitsuko Uchida

It’s difficult to imagine a stronger line-up for Berg’s Chamber Concerto for piano, violin and 13 wind instruments than Mitsuko Uchida, Christian Tetzlaff, Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez. Uchida’s diamantine pianism and Tetzlaff’s pure tone combine perfectly. The sound is crisp, the playing suave, the direction alert. (Berg: Chamber Concerto, Pierre Boulez, Christian Tetzlaff, Ensemble.

…both soloists, Mitsuko Uchida and Christian Tetzlaff, are perfectly attuned to Boulez’s approach – they have given a number of performances of the Chamber Concerto before - and the combination of accuracy and textural clarity with the highly wrought expressiveness that is the essence of Berg’s music is perfectly caught. The authority and logic of the performance are compelling, and this is easily the best version of this intractable work to appear on CD.

The shock came when Ian Bostridge was joined by pianist MItsuko Uchida for Britten’s cycle The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, written in August 1945 and dedicated to the tenor Peter Pears. Uchida attacked the thunderous opening of O my blacke Soule with an air of desperate terror, establishing the bleak but ever-changing intensity of all nine songs.

And if Mitsuko Uchida’s intelligent and minutely attentive style made for a predictably exemplary solo performance, the London Symphony Orchestra were her equal in every respect, matching her for precision of timing and rounded purity of tone. Watching Uchida can be almost as great a delight as hearing her. Beethoven’s magnificently extended trills seem to travel up her fingers from the keyboard, extending gradually along her arm before taking hold of her entire body, shimmering in loose silks. An avuncular Sir Colin Davis twinkled back, conducting for the most part with his playfully communicative eyes.

As ever, Uchida was a model of poise and clarity, imbuing the folk-influenced material with fine rhythmic spring and molding the prayerful lines with reverent beauty. She provided ample tonal power to cut through the orchestra, including octave and scale-wise passages with which Bartok creates whirlwinds of sound.

She is, as ever, an engaging and completely fluent musician, and she has her own sense of values. One can argue with them for a while but not for long.

Though some of the winning discs in the BBC Music Magazine's 2008 awards are unexpected, to say the least, there won't be much complaint from me about the one that has taken the top prize. Making Mitsuko Uchida's thrilling recording of Beethoven's Op 101 and Hammerklavier sonatas the magazine's disc of the year is a wonderful tribute, not only to a pair of outstanding performances, from a year that was distinguished by a number of exceptional piano discs, but to a pianist who now has to be numbered among the finest in the world today. …It gives her playing an irresistible combination of passionate involvement and intellectual rigour - whatever she plays, you always sense that Uchida has thought through the reasons for everything she does with it, but always in the best interests of communicating what she feels is the emotional essence of the music. It's a rare, and very precious gift.

Few pianists are capable of giving a solo recital in London's Royal Festival Hall and filling it - not just with a decent enough crowd but also with a sound that resonates in the hall's lofty recesses. Mitsuko Uchida is one of them, and the fact that she did so this week with a programme that went beyond conventional boundaries shows how high her standing is. She is that rare animal, a performer of manifest intelligence and wide-ranging taste who makes choices on principle - and who inspires trust in those choices among a non-specialist public.

Ein dramaturgisch perfekter Abschluss für einen spannend programmierten Abend. Schuberts schwierige c-Moll-Sonate D 985 präsentierte die in Wien ausgebildete Pianistin mit herausgemeißelten Dur-Moll-Wechseln, klarer Gewichtung der Stimmen und einem grotesk huschenden Finalsatz. Wer György Kurtág schon einmal mit seiner Frau Márta am gedämpften Pianino gehört hat, weiß, wie berührend die Kombination von Kurtágs "Játékok"-Stücken mit Musik von Johann Sebastian Bach sein kann. Uchida begab sich hochkonzentriert auf die Spuren dieses intimen Musikerlebnisses. Sie hatte ein klares Klangkonzept für jedes der kurzen "Játékok"-Stücke: Hier wurde Uchidas Virtuosität nicht im mechanischen Sinne evident, sondern im Skizzieren einer Stimmung mit wenigen Noten.

Whatever code unlocks the mysteries of Mozart, the pianist Mitsuko Uchida seems to carry it in her DNA. When she touches a work by this composer, it almost always turns to music – in the fullest and most poetic sense. … This particular Mozart Concerto [K488] glows more gently than most, thanks in part to the streamlined orchestra that the composer chose to write for. From Uchida’s initial entrance in the first movement, her signature Mozart sound was in evidence: melodies floated with a velvety softness of touch but also complimented by a firm and articulate left hand, gestures made with a keen harmonic sensitivity. Thursday night, the second movement in particular boasted some beautifully weightless playing and plenty of delicate give-and-take with the orchestra. Davis made sure you could hear every note of the solo line but also that Uchida had a supportive partner at ever turn.

…it is her account of the Hammerklavier that is so overwhelming, and perhaps the finest to appear on disc since Emil Gilels’ 25 years ago. …. She places the expressive weight firmly on the great slow movement, conceived in vast, hymn-like paragraphs and leaving the heroics to the theatre of the opening Allegro and the huge finale, so making her performance as much an intellectual triumph as a pianistic one.

Album of the Week: Uchida speaks with the authentic voice of imperial Vienna.

Explosive and reclusive, majestic and intimate, ecstatic and quietly ruminative – it’s tempting to say that all human life and emotion is encapsulated in Uchida’s latest Beethoven recording, so encompassing is her traversal of the music’s moods and meanings. …She embraces the humanism and universalism of Beethoven, his emotional gravity and Olympian intellect, and plays at the peak of her considerable powers. Unquestionably my disc of the year.

This disc is of a calibre that I count myself lucky to encounter once in a decade.

In K595 the peerless Mitsuko Uchida confirmed her pre-eminence as a Mozart soloist, offering wit, sparkle and gravitas with that most perfectly judged of touches.