Mao Fujita, another young piano star to watch out for | Culture

In the case of the young pianist Mao Fujita (Tokyo, 25 years old), everything seems to emerge from a fresh, light and effervescent vision of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Two years ago, he demonstrated this with his successful debut recording, on Sony Classical, where he recorded the complete sonatas of the Salzburger. But also now, live, at the start of his first and only solo recital in Spain, on September 16, in the Sala Mozart of the Auditorium of Zaragoza.

The Japanese appeared on stage with the simplicity of someone who was passing by. After sitting down smiling, he immediately attacked the song that opens the Twelve variations on “Ah, I will tell you, Mom.”K. 265 with a sound of pure filigree that immediately silenced the room. It was not difficult to remember another young and excellent colleague who exhibits the same simple gestures, the Korean Yunchan Lim, who, like him, has also forged his sound personality through recordings of legendary pianists. In the case of the Japanese, and as he acknowledged to the magazine Fifteen Questionshas been captivated since childhood by the magic touch and sound of Vladimir Horowitz playing Mozart in his famous Moscow recital in 1986.

In Zaragoza, Fujita opted for an admirably fluid, balanced and intimate reading of the Mozartian variations. His articulation was unerringly precise in both hands and he added attractive improvised embellishments in most of the repetitions. He planned the work with a prodigious musical logic: he turned the first seven variations, in C major, into a spectacular crescendo which stops abruptly in the octave, in C minor, underlining this homage to Bach’s counterpoint (today we know, from studies of the paper on which he wrote this work, that Mozart wrote it in 1782, when he was living in Vienna and had just discovered the music of the great baroque composer through Baron Van Swieten). However, Fujita reserved the greatest contrast for the adagio and the allegro which make up the last two variations.

The transition from Mozart to Beethoven was not easy, due to the initial intimacy and lightness. However, Fujita was very clever in putting the 32 Variations in C minor WoO 80 to the big one Sonata No. 23 “Appassionata”which closed the first part of his recital. The variations, from 1806, allowed him to progressively intensify the contrasts and reach the ideal pianistic temperature in the sonata, which Beethoven finished that same year, as can be deduced from the signs of humidity left by a storm on his autograph. But the Japanese pianist, despite his technical perfection and his admirable musicality, did not manage to transmit in Beethoven the same freedom and effervescence that we had heard in Mozart. And his Passionate It didn’t sound promising until the earthquake presto final.

The second part began with a tribute to the Japanese composer Akio Yashiro (1929-1976), who completed his training in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Nadia Boulanger. In fact, the seven examples we heard from his works 24 Preludes for pianofrom 1945, were written before his stay in France and as a modern response to the 24 preludes op. 28by Chopin. Not by chance, Fujita has just released his second album on Sony Classical, entitled 72 Preludeswhich includes both collections along with the 24 preludes op. 11by Scriabin. An album that the pianist himself has summed up with an apt gastronomic simile related to sushi: “If Chopin and Scriabin are the fish and rice, the base, Yashiro is the wasabi, equally vital and with that special touch to create something delicious.”

And we hear that special touch in Yashiro’s seven small musical doses. With a great variety of proposals that alternate winks to romanticism, impressionism, neoclassicism and even ragtime. In Fujita’s hands the mysterious number 24 stood out with a spectacular and clear handling of dynamics and articulation. The Fantasy in B minor op. 28 (1900), by Scriabin, which was another highlight. When the Japanese pianist won the silver medal from the same At the 2019 Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition, the jury told him, to his surprise, that he played with Russian technique (in fact, his teacher in Tokyo, Minoru Nojima, had been a student of Lev Oborin). Perhaps that is why Fujita has developed an entirely natural ability to extract lyrical exquisiteness from the lush staves of the Moscow composer who died in 1915.

Fujita saved the best of his recital for the end. Indeed, that initial evolution from the lightness, fluidity and freshness of Mozart produced a memorable Liszt. His stunning interpretation of Sonnet 104 of Petrarchfrom the second book of Years of pilgrimagepublished in 1858 and focusing on artistic impressions of Italy, paid special attention to its second verse: and I fear and I hope, and I burn and I am icewhere the poet expresses the contradictions and ambiguities of his passionate love. Fujita expressed the whole range of sentimental feelings, from beginning to end, combining longing with serenity, without forgetting anguish or waiting. At the beginning, he extended the cauldron of singable con passion, without slowing down to raise the theme of the love elegy and, in the end, in the adagiohe added a pause of his own in order to underline his last hearing as a sigh of reconciliation.

The one who was not left behind was also Dante Sonatawhich closed the program. With its three narratively integrated themes, both the diabolical tritone at the beginning and the chromatic one, which we heard at the start of the very agitated soonor the monumental chorale in F sharp major, which Fujita elevated, confronted and whispered throughout this composition that seems to evoke the tragic destiny of Francesca of Rimini.

At the end, the pianist acknowledged the audience’s applause with a brief encore. He pointed at it timidly with his index finger, as if to say: “Let’s see if you like this.” And he played a lyrical and fluid rendition of the beautiful Song without words op. 67 no. 2by Mendelssohn. But the evening did not give for more and we were left wanting to hear some of his exquisite Chopin. Nor will it be on his next visit to our country, next January, where he will play in a piano trio with the violinist Renaud Capuçon and the cellist Kian Soltani, in Valencia and Madrid.