Swerves and flourishes
However, Mao Fujita is anything but timid. On the contrary, when a 25-year-old releases a complete recording of the Mozart sonatas, that's quite something. In this case, an extremely amusing one; the roguish charm with which he sprinkles a dodge here and a flourish there in these sonatas is just as infectious as his resounding laughter when he is asked about it in interviews. You get the impression that music is really a game for him - no compulsion, no show, nothing calculated.
There was no question of compulsion in his childhood either. Mao Fujita's father is a doctor, his mother a nurse. Although he started playing the piano at the age of three, it was not intended to be a profession; he chose it himself.
That it was the right choice became clear in 2017 at the International Clara Haskil Piano Competition in Vevey. There, Mao Fujita not only won first prize, the audience prize and the prize for the interpretation of a contemporary work. He also electrified the artistic director Martin Engstroem, who was sitting in the audience and immediately booked the young pianist for his Verbier Festival; first for the Academy and soon afterwards as a soloist. The Tchaikovsky Competition then opened further doors: to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Elbphilharmonie, to the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to conductors such as Semyon Bychkov and Riccardo Chailly.
Under Chailly's direction, Mao Fujita made his debut at the Lucerne Festival in 2022 with Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 - and in such a way that no one would have thought of the phrase "keyboard lion". He also plays this work with astonishing lightness and enchanting sensitivity; certainly with power where necessary, but never in the sense of a demonstration of strength. This makes opposing voices audible, which are otherwise often drowned out, and the emotions are given shades that cannot be summarised in catchwords.
Doubting and convincing
Mao Fujita's Rachmaninov interpretations could also be seen as an answer to the question of what Kirill Gerstein conveys to his students. It is what Gerstein describes as a "tightrope walk": "On the one hand, you have to doubt and search - and on the other, you have to present your interpretative decisions on stage very confidently and convincingly."
Gerstein is not the only one to support Mao Fujita in this balancing act. In an interview for the Verbier Festival, he once named three other pianistic role models: the Romanian Dinu Lipatti, the American William Kapell and the Uzbek Alexei Sultanov. It is an unusual list, which on the one hand reveals how intensively and openly Mao Fujita engages with tradition. On the other hand, one wonders whether it is a coincidence that he mentioned three pianists of all people who died young: not serene old masters, but exceptional talents in the stage of promise.
The phase of promise is also his at the moment - and he has already begun to fulfil it. It is therefore fitting that he is taking two steps at once for his debut at the Tonhalle Zurich. In November, Mao Fujita will play a recital in the Série jeunes, in which promising young musicians introduce themselves. This will be followed in January by a regular orchestral concert with conductor Marek Janowski and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27: a clear sign that this pianist is already more than just a young hopeful.
We use deepL.com for our translations into English.
