Mitsuko Uchida’s History with The Cleveland Orchestra
In over three decades of collaboration, Mitsuko Uchida and The Cleveland Orchestra have presented dozens of electrifying concerts and commercial recordings
Mitsuko Uchida’s long connection with the orchestra began in September of 1990, when she performed Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland. Since then, she has forged stronger and stronger ties with the Orchestra; in the past several years she has released four commercial recordings with the Orchestra of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 9, 18–21, 23–24, and 27. One of these recordings, a 2009 Decca album of the Concertos Nos. 23 and 24, won a Grammy for best instrumental soloist performance with Orchestra in 2011.
While widely known as a deft performer of much repertoire (especially the music of Schoenberg), Mitsuko Uchida is best known as a Mozart specialist. Her performances of Mozart’s music are critically acclaimed both for her role as a performer and her conducting from the keyboard. As strange as conducting from the keyboard might seem to our modern eyes, having the pianist also be conductor was not unusual in Mozart’s time. In the late eighteenth-century, the concept of a separate and distinct conductor was foreign; a conductor was often whoever was the soloist, the concertmaster, or the composer themselves (if available). While not practical for most Romantic or modern repertoire, this style of conducting is very viable for Classical period music such as that of Mozart or Haydn. The experience is different when the pianist conducts — the whole dynamic of the performance changes, as the division is effaced between the “leader” of the orchestra, and one of the participants in the music making.
— Alex Lawler was the 2015–16 season archives research fellow. The fellowship is an opportunity for graduate music students from Case Western Reserve University to work with The Cleveland Orchestra Archives.
All photographs and audio clips courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra Archives.
Want to know more?
- Mitsuko Uchida’s website
- An interesting article with some insights into her personality
- Her Discography (Mitsuko Uchida records exclusively with Decca, so this is comprehensive)