Classical MITSUKO UCHIDA Beyond the Notes Mitsuko Uchida is one of the all-time greats, a legendary pianist with only a few peers. It is a status she has reached, in part, because of her unswerving dedication to her art and her lifetime’s commitment to the composers whose music matters most to her – hence her willingness to put in an extraordinary amount of time and commitment to work on a single piece of music. “I spent a solid 10 years working on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations,” she says with a smile. Uchida released her recording of the Diabelli Variations in 2022, 14 years after her last Beethoven recording, and it has received universal acclaim, including a Grammy nomination and the Gramophone Piano Award. With her technical mastery, emotional depth and commitment to promoting the highest standards in classical music, Uchida has been captivating audiences with her performances for more than four decades. She has performed with many of the world’s ILLUSTRATION ISTOCK 26
leading orchestras and conductors during that time, and today maintains a busy concert schedule, which includes solo recitals, chamber music, performances with orchestra and conductor, and also performances where she herself directs the orchestra as well as performing the solo piano part. She has also for many years dedicated time to mentoring the next generation of great musicians – and insists that she learns as much from the students at Marlboro, the summer school for gifted musicians in Vermont where she is Artistic Director, as they might from her. “To be a musician is not a profession. It’s a commitment,” she says of her remarkable approach. “You have to have a deeply rooted urgency to express one’s emotions through music and nothing else. It took years for me to understand that it is not enough to play the piano – rather, it’s the task of a lifetime to understand how music really works. The more you can do, the more you can express. The more you know, the more interesting it becomes. And music is beyond interesting. For me, it’s all-consuming.” “You have to have your own sound,” she explains. She reckons she did not find hers – elegant, refined, restrained – until her late 20s. That is when, she says, she uncovered what she considers the real difference between a child prodigy and a real musician: character. “Success will come if you have something [musical] to say,” she says. “Some people have success with very little to say. They are lucky. There is a hit-and-miss factor in life and you have to accept it. But if there is a heaven and if I arrive at the gate and they ask me what I am, all I will say is, ‘musician.’” Listen. Keep your ears open. COURTESY OF Living FOR MORE INFORMATION ON LOCATIONS AND TO BOOK, SCAN THE QR CODE 27
