Kirin Uchida Heaven (2021)

Philips has reissued, at an affordable price, Mitsuko Uchida's recordings of all the Mozart piano sonatas. It's a great package for anyone who hasn't heard her celebrated performances of these or may have only heard one or two. She uses a lightness of touch and approach as if she were playing on an instrument more like what Mozart would have had, rather than its modern, sturdy descendent. There is also a deliberateness and care given to each phrase, adding a delicate nuance here, a smidgen more drama there. E

Schumann - Waldszenen, G Minor Sonata, Gesange der Fruhe - Mitsuko Uchida (2013) {Decca 478 5393}
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© 2013 Decca Music | 478 5393
Classical / Romantic / Piano

Japanese-British pianist Mitsuko Uchida continues to impress with recordings that are not so much intellectual as simply well thought out, making a challenging yet extremely satisfying overall impression. Consider the three works by Robert Schumann recorded here. Only the Waldszenen, Op. 82 (Forest Scenes), are well known. The Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22, is an early but not immature work, composed in 1830 and supplied with a new finale in 1838 at the suggestion of Clara Schumann, who pointed out that while she could play the original version, few others would be able to.

It's one measure of a great performance that it focuses the attention so entirely on the music that you forget everything else. Another is that it banishes all thought of other performances from your mind. That both circumstances should apply with a work as familiar and over-recorded as the 'Emperor' is cause for celebration. This is just such a performance - which by definition presupposes such a perfect a unanimity of approach on the parts of conductor and soloist that one almost forgets (and how ironically!) that this is a concerto at all.

Uchida's performances seem completely natural as if that is the way the performances were intended. Not a point of cunning escapes her. Yet there is never a trace of self-consciousness in her point-making, not even in the heightened intensity of the tragic B minor Adagio. It is Mozart at his purest.

There is hardly a better way to approach Ludwig van Beethoven than through his piano concertos. Beethoven’s own instrument was the piano, and in his improvisations – which made him the darling of the Viennese salons – he merged virtuosity and unbridled expression. The piano concertos give a clear idea of these performances. At the same time, they are prime examples of Beethoven’s ability to create large orchestral works with seemingly endless arcs of tension.