{"id":89949,"date":"2023-03-12T11:58:39","date_gmt":"2023-03-12T18:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/?p=89949"},"modified":"2026-01-14T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:12:22","slug":"mao-fujita-mozart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/mao-fujita-mozart\/","title":{"rendered":"John Pitman Review: Mao Fujita Takes On Mozart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Pianist <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/maofujita.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mao Fujita<\/a><\/strong> was born in Japan and now lives in Europe, where he is studying with Kirill Gerstein. Mao was invited to the renowned <em>Verbier Festival<\/em> in Switzerland a couple of years ago, on the strength of having a number of Mozart&#8217;s piano sonatas in his fingers.\u00a0The Festival asked Mao if he could get the rest of them &#8211; 18 in all &#8211; ready for a live performance.\u00a0 Mao did so, and the result of that was a signing to Sony, and this new recording of the complete Mozart sonatas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mao takes an approach that would have been absolutely expected by Mozart and others of his time:&nbsp;not to play the sonatas &#8220;note for note&#8221;, but rather to bring something different each time the phrase came back.&nbsp;This fresh approach is just one of the attractions of Mao&#8217;s new recording, the other is the sense of familiarity and intimacy he has with the music, as though he&#8217;s known this music his whole life.&nbsp;And in some ways, he has&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hear All Classical Portland\u2019s Program Director <strong>John Pitman<\/strong>&#8216;s conversation with Mao, and enjoy some musical excerpts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps:\/\/soundcloud.com\/all-classical-portland\/john-pitman-review-mao-fujita-takes-on-mozart\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mao Fujita&#8217;s <em>Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas<\/em> is <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prestomusic.com\/classical\/products\/9370143--mozart-the-complete-piano-sonatas\" target=\"_blank\">available now from Sony at prestomusic.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pianist Mao Fujita was born in Japan and now lives in Europe, where he is studying with Kirill Gerstein. Mao was invited to the renowned Verbier Festival in Switzerland a couple of years ago, on the strength of having a number of Mozart&#8217;s piano sonatas in his fingers.\u00a0The Festival asked Mao if he could get &#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":89950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4040],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pitman-reviews"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 04:20:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110004,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89949\/revisions\/110004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}