Mitsuko Uchida

Born in Tokyo in 1948, the pianist Mitsuko Uchida began playing piano when she was six. After her father was appointed Japanese ambassador to Austria, she continued her training at the Vienna Academy of Music under Richard Hauser. Prizes at the 1966 ARD Competition in Munich, the 1970 Beethoven Competition in Vienna, and the 1975 Leeds Piano Competition launched her international career. Her repertoire centers on the piano works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann but also encompasses composers of the Second Viennese School and György Kurtág. Uchida has close ties with the Cleveland Orchestra, with whom she has performed more than 100 times. She has also appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She particularly enjoys working with Gustavo Dudamel, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Vladimir Jurowski, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Sir Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Uchida has been Artistic Partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra since 2016 and Co-Director of the Marlboro Festival since 2018. From 2022 to the summer of 2025, she served as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist. She regularly gives recitals in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York, and Tokyo, as well as at the Salzburg Festival and the Salzburg Mozart Week. She was featured as an “artiste étoile” at Lucerne Festival in 2013. Uchida has won two Grammy Awards and received the Gramophone Award in 2022 for her most recent album, an account of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Mitsuko Uchida was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009, and she received the Golden Mozart Medal from the Salzburg Mozarteum Mozarteum Foundation and the Praemium Imperiale in 2015. The Royal Philharmonic Society in London has awarded her its Gold Medal, and she holds an Honorary Degree from the University of Cambridge.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 2 September 1990 as the soloist in Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, with the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi.

April 2025