Kirin Uchida Heaven (2021)

Mitsuko Uchida's slowly evolving Schubert cycle continues to thrill and scintillate with every new volume. At first glance, the works here might seem less essential than some of her previous offerings: an early (and infrequently played) sonata and the endlessly recorded Moments musicaux. However, just a few minutes' listening will soon persuade you otherwise. Schubert may have been only 20 when he penned this E-flat Sonata, but in Uchida's hands its expansive four-movement form is a perfect delight. She finds an ideally dancing lilt for the opening Allegro, not allowing the moments of drama to overshadow the movement's sunny disposition.

Mitsuko Uchida is one of the finest interpreters of Mozart's piano music. She brings to this music a lightness and delicacy that fits it perfectly. Uchida plays with an incredible humility. Her performances are never overbearing - she offers subtlety and emotion rather than force. Both lyrical and expressive, she uses her brilliant technique to play the virtuoso parts of the sonatas, yet never seems to be showing off. Her nimble fingers give the most attractive ornaments to these pieces, yet, again, these ornaments are not gratuitous - they fit perfectly with the tone and colours of the works.

For her fifth live recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra, Mitsuko Uchida presents the Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K 453, and the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K 503, a delightful pairing that reflects her previous albums in this critically acclaimed series on Decca.

Mitsuko Uchida's recordings continue to win golden opinions on first appearance; and thereafter, which is always the sterner test. It is interesting how often her name appears in "Building a Library" shortlists on BBC Radio 3. Most recently. it was her Philips recording of Schumann's Carnaval (Philips, 5/95) which won the corporation's coveted laurel. This pairing of Beethoven's Third and Fourth Piano Concertos is formidable, too, the playing at once brilliant and sensitive, rigorous and free-spirited.

Mitsuko Uchida has been a committed exponent of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto for over a decade now. It is a work which remains controversial in its adaptation of the serial method to an almost Brahmsian harmonic palette, wedded to a formal approach that takes up the integrated design, and textural richness, of Schoenberg's pre-atonal works. Certainly in terms of the balance between soloist and orchestra, this recording clarifies the often capricious interplay to a degree previously unheard on disc (and most likely in the concert hall too).Interpretatively, it combines Pollini's dynamism, without the hectoring touch that creeps into the Adagio's climactic passages, and Brendel's lucidity, avoiding the deadpan feeling that pervades his final Giocoso.

Something about the key of D major seems to trigger off Mitsuko Uchida's adrenalin. The energy level in the Rondo and the earlier of the sonatas here is accordingly high, and…she has the technique and temperament to make musical sense of her chosen tempos… It is the long variation movement concluding the D major Sonata…where Uchida achieves marvels of shading within a steadily maintained basic pulse… B flat major draws more serenity out of Uchida. In the Sonata, K570, her energy is applied in all the right places and her response to the tonal scheme of the first movement development is especially acute.

Two masterful Schubert interpreters, tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Mitsuko Uchida record Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte for the first time. On a new Decca Classics album, Uchida and Padmore appear on record for the first time in this live recording from London’s Wigmore Hall. They perform Schubert’s Schwanengesang (his “Swansong”, first published weeks after the composer’s premature death in 1828) and Beethoven’s only major song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. With a lifetime of experience with this music, Uchida and Padmore are the perfect duo to interpret this magnificent repertoire.

The three sonatas on this disc were all written in 1777-78, and mark Mozart's attainment of a new level of skill and sophistication in his writing for the piano. Uchida's accounts, recorded in 1985, midway through her survey of the composer's complete piano sonatas for Philips, are sympathetic and nicely shaped. Some pianists have found more vehemence and darkness in the A minor sonata, K. 310, and more elegance in the two major-key works, but the balanced, essentially lyrical approach Uchida brings to the music works very well. This is soulful playing, of an intimacy not often encountered these days, and the recording does it full justice.