Mao Fujita makes Mozart's sonatas his own

When teenage piano prodigies are looking to impress, they tend to go for the showstoppers. Mozart doesn’t normally get a look-in: Compared to the likes of Rachmaninov, Liszt or Beethoven, he’s a little too dainty, a little too genteel.

Mao Fujita, who recently released a five-disc collection of the composer’s complete piano sonatas, admits that he was a late convert.

“When I was 16 or 17, I was in thrall to the more virtuoso players with amazing technique, like Lang Lang or Yuja Wang... and they didn’t play Mozart so much,” he says, speaking backstage at Muza Kawasaki Symphony Hall in Kanagawa Prefecture.

In under an hour, he’s due to take the stage with a pair of “wonderful, super-veteran” musicians: violinist Teiko Maehashi, 79, and cellist Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, 80. It’s an all-Beethoven program, featuring two pieces that are new to him.

“I’m really nervous,” he says, despite all indications to the contrary. “It’s like: ‘Don’t you dare screw anything up!’”

At 24, Fujita still radiates the same boyish, buoyant energy that wooed audiences at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2019, where he won the silver medal, heralding his arrival as a concert pianist of note. He’s a vivacious, engaging performer, treating even the most demanding assignments — such as Rachmaninov’s Piano Sonata No. 3 — with a palpable sense of delight.

But it’s his performances of Mozart that have recently been earning Fujita the most acclaim. His sonata recordings are the first release in an exclusive multi-album deal with Sony Classical International. In a promotional video released by the label, Martin T:son Engstrom — founder of Switzerland’s Verbier Festival and a veteran of countless competition juries — describes the pianist’s interpretations as “like Champagne.”

“I’d thought of Mozart’s music as being really simple and a bit boring, but I realized how unique it is,” Fujita enthuses. “It develops so quickly: He’ll start with one melody, but then he’s already moved on to a different melody, a different harmony.”

The sonatas span most of Mozart’s adult life. He wrote the first in 1774 when he was 18, while the last was completed in 1789, two years before his death.

They feature some of his most famous melodies: Even people who know nothing of classical music will likely recognize the opening allegro from Sonata No. 16, or the “Turkish March” from Sonata No. 11. How do you breathe new life into such familiar fare?

“I’ve heard those pieces countless times, too, but I started with a blank slate,” Fujita says. “I’d go through them one bar at a time — like I was playing a completely new piece ― thinking about the quality I wanted this note to have, how I wanted this note to sound, or when to use a bit of pedal.”

This reflects the influence of his late teacher, Minoru Nojima, who passed away last year at the age of 76. Highly regarded by fellow pianists, Nojima showed a fastidious devotion to practice, often spending years working on a single piece.

“He’d tell me to inject life and value into every note,” Fujita says. “The first time I went to him with a Mozart sonata, we spent 30 minutes on a single bar.”

This painstaking approach pays off in the performance. Fujita describes how intensive practice helps him access the internal logic of Mozart’s compositions, reaching a point at which “my head and my fingers become able to understand where the harmonies will go next.”

He’s also learned to know when to depart from the score, adding improvised embellishments to the music. This isn’t as heretical as it sounds: Improvisation was an integral part of piano performance in Mozart’s day, as detailed in the 1753 treatise “Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments,” by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (son of Johann Sebastian).

“If a section is repeated, you absolutely have to change the way you play it the second time around ― and that’s a chance for the pianist to shine,” Fujita explains.

When he performs Mozart in concert, he can appear to be in a state of rapture. What’s going through his head when he plays?

“How should I put it?” he ponders. “It feels like I’m just supplying the stimulus. I’ll have a sense of watching myself objectively: Rather than having to make a big effort, it kind of flows, like I’m the conductor. That’s particularly true when I’m playing Mozart.”

Mozart’s Sonata No. 9 will feature in the program when Fujita gives his debut recital at New York’s hallowed Carnegie Hall later this month. He’s also set to perform well-oiled renditions of pieces by Brahms, Liszt and both Clara and Robert Schumann — his core repertoire throughout the past year.

“I’d normally start playing new pieces from January,” he says, “but I had that Carnegie Hall date in my schedule, and I didn’t have the nerve to perform a new repertoire for the first time at Carnegie!”

He returns to Japan next month for a series of concerts performing an all-Mozart program, then will decamp to Europe for the spring. Among his various engagements, he’ll be giving solo recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Sala Verdi in Milan, as well as touring with the Filarmonica della Scala under conductor Riccardo Chailly.

Europe has become his second base. He’s been enrolled at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin since 2020, where he is studying with Russian American pianist Kirill Gerstein, although the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from moving to the city until last year.

Being in Europe has brought him closer to the composers who created the classical canon. He’s visited Beethoven and Mozart’s old stomping grounds in Vienna, and even had a chance to try out the latter’s preserved fortepiano, a precursor to the modern concert grand.

“When the score says something should be played with a light touch, I know what that means now,” he says. “There’s a big difference between playing based on knowledge and playing based on experience.”

The downside of spending less time in Japan, he says, is that he’s already losing track of the latest fashions: “Trends come and go quickly in Japan, right? It’ll be like, ‘Oh, is this the latest buzzword? Is this what everyone’s eating now?’ I only got as far as tapioca tea.”

Mao Fujita’s “Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas” is out now. For details about upcoming concerts, visit maofujita.com/en.