With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, 24-year old pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which come along only rarely, equally at home in Mozart as the major romantic repertoire, with The New York Times writing, "As soon as his fingers touched the keys, waves of airy filigree, beautifully shaped and accomplished, emerged in almost continuous streams” on the occasion of his US debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2023.
Born in Tokyo, Fujita was still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017 when he took First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, along with the Audience Award, Prix Modern Times, and the Prix Coup de Coeur, which first brought him to the attention of the international music community. He was also the Silver Medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where his special musical qualities received exceptional attention from a jury of leading musicians.
Highlights in the 2023/24 season include tours with the Gewandhaus Orchestra (Andris Nelsons), the Czech Philharmonic (Semyon Bychkov), and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo (Kazuki Yamada), concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Sir John Eliot Gardiner), Israel Philharmonic (Iván Fischer), Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Frankfurt Radio Symphony, as well as recitals at the Elbphilharmonie, among others. Fujita has performed at the Elbphilharmonie, Heidelberger Frühling, KlavierFestival Ruhr, and on tour in Japan and China.
Fujita has debuted with conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Marek Janowski, Andris Nelsons, Lahav Shani, Christoph Eschenbach, Vasily Petrenko, and Ryan Bancroft, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester, Münchner Philharmoniker, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, DSO Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. He appears regularly in solo and chamber music recitals at major piano festivals and halls in Europe and Asia, performing with Renaud Capuçon, Antoine Tamestit, Kian Soltani, Zlatomir Fung, Marc Bouchkov, and Makoto Ozone, among others.
Fujita is an exclusive Sony Classical International artist. In October 2022, his eagerly anticipated debut album on the Sony Classical label, a studio recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, was released to unanimous acclaim for its transparent sound worlds and vividly-detailed interpretation. He has performed the full sonata cycle at the Verbier Festival, the Wigmore Hall, and across Japan’s major concert halls.
Starting piano lessons at the age of three, Fujita won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan, and became a laureate of numerous national and international competitions such as the Rosario Marciano International Piano Competition in Vienna (2013), Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (2015), and the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition (2016).
Fujita moved to Berlin in 2022 for further studies with Kirill Gerstein.
February 2024
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSO by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
