Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas in Bloomington, MN

Pianist
Mao Fujita
came on the scene when he won the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland, and that is appropriate; his playing somewhat resembles hers in its grace and restraint. A complete set of
Mozart
sonatas is an ambitious project for a pianist in their early career, as
Fujita
is, but his playing has the feeling of having gone down a rabbit hole with these works. A note from
states: "When I play [
's] sonatas only according to what he wrote, it's quite boring. We can, instead, do something special." One might suppose that this refers to ornamentation, but actually,
's alterations to the text are of a different kind; he often phrases repetitions differently from the initial statement of a phrase, and his readings are full of small details of interpretation that cross the boundaries of the periodic Classical style. Yet his playing has such moderation and control that he never moves into the territory inhabited by the 19th century way of playing
, which of course, survived well beyond that time. He reins in big passages, like the quasi-symphonic first movement of the
Piano Sonata in D major, K. 284
. It is easy to get drawn into
's world, and there are individual movements that have a mysterious limpid beauty in his hands; the slow movement of the putatively easy
Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545
, has even attained a measure of virality. With interpretations as distinctive as these, not all will be to everyone's taste, but it's clear that
has lived up to his considerable ambitions. ~ James Manheim