For SCP debut Mao Fujita offers an organic program of variations and preludes

The classical-music world never stands still. Constantly coming along are new, young talents who impress and surprise.

That’s certainly true in the keyboard realm, where multiple figures have taken the limelight, including Alexandre Kantorow, who the won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019, and Yuncham Lim, the gold medalist at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Also prominent on that list of rising artists is Japanese pianist Mao Fujita, 26, who will perform March 16 on the Symphony Center Presents Piano series in a recital featuring works by Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven.

This will be his first time in the Chicago, and he is excited. “I recently talked to [conductor] Klaus Mäkelä, who will be [the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s] music director [starting] in 2027-28, and he said it is an amazing city with amazing people. I am looking forward to being there.”

Fujita usually comes only once or twice a year to the United States, with his most recent performance occurring at New York’s Carnegie Hall in November. “Sunday’s recital left no doubt that this pianist’s distinctive sense of time and sound sets him apart,” wrote David Wright in the New York Classical Review about that appearance.

When he was 3 years old, Fujita began taking piano lessons; because his older brother also studied piano, he thought every child could play the piano. He was disabused of that notion when he started kindergarten and discovered he was an outlier.

He further realized that his skills at the keyboard were different when his parents entered him in several competitions beginning when he was 12 and won first prize in the junior section of an international contest in Taiwan.

When he was older, he went on to win the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland in 2017 and was one of two entrants to win a silver medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019 behind Kantorow.

Fujita was especially interested in taking part in the Tchaikovsky Competition, because he wanted to have a chance to play in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, which opened in 1901 and is one of the world’s most famous concert stages.

“My hero was Vladimir Horowitz,” he said of the celebrated Russian pianist. “I have seen so many videos of his concerts, and one of them was him playing at the Moscow Conservatory. And it was something special, because the very first piece he played was Mozart’s K. 330, his beautiful C Major Sonata, and I wanted to play this sonata, and I wanted to play in the same place as Horowitz.”

At the same time, Fujita sought to get the feedback from the distinguished juries of the two European competitions; all of his studies had been in Japan, and he was eager to hear what others outside his home country had to say about his playing.

The pianist is in no way a social-media devotee, noting that he has other people handling his Instagram and other accounts. In January, he was willing to give a social-media platform a try when he appeared on "THE F1RST TAKE."

The Japanese YouTube channel, which has more than 10.5 million subscribers, typically features pop artists who perform live against a simple white background. Fujita performed the third movement from Beethoven’s famed Piano Sonata No. 23 (Appassionata), and generated considerable attention.

Last year, in a more traditional vein, Fujita released a two-volume album on Sony Classical titled “72 Preludes,” which features an unusual lineup of just preludes by three different composers — Frederic Chopin, Alexander Scriabin and Akio Yashiro — that span more than 100 years and show the development of the form.

Yashiro began his set of 24 Preludes in 1945 when he was just 15 years old. “He used Japanese elements including the pentatonic scale — you can hear that from the very first prelude,” Fujita said in the disc’s liner notes. “It is fascinating, how many elements, how many cultures and how many states of mind are explored in this set — different meanings, techniques and detours.” 

“If the Chopin and the Scriabin are the beef and the rice, the base, the Yashiro is the wasabi,“ Fujita said. ”Just as vital, and with that special kick to create something delicious.”

Unlike, say, a Mozart piano sonata, a prelude might last no more 30 or 40 seconds. “In making an interpretation, it’s quite difficult in that there is no exposition, no development, no recapitulation,” Fujita said.

For his Chicago program, he will perform one of the selections from that album, Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, as well as three works that all incorporate variations. They include the final work, the Appassionata Sonata, which as Fujita was quick to point out, has a slow second movement that is a set of variations in D-flat Major.

“So variations and preludes is the theme,” he said.

After the Chopin Preludes will come Mozart’s Variations on Ah vous dirai-je, maman, K. 265, a take-off on a French folk song that the composer wrote when he was about 25. Calling it one of the composer’s best keyboard works, Fujita, who was sitting at his Kawai piano in his Berlin apartment as he did this interview via Zoom, played a few passages from the work. In Chicago, that set will be followed by Beethoven’s 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C Minor, WoO 80, written in 1806.

Both Mozart and Beethoven are great composers of variations, Fujita said, but their approaches are quite different. “Mozart, for example, has a very charming and attractive way of using ornament,” he said. “And the Beethoven is such a grand piece, and it’s always about tension.”

The latter starts in C Minor but shifts to C Major, moving from what the pianist called a “strict character” to a “warm character.” “This is phenomenal,” he said, demonstrating the transition on his piano. “I think this a very beautiful moment.”