Mao Fujita

The young Japanese piano sensation Mao Fujita is only 25 years old, yet he has already attracted significant international attention. In recent years, he has made his debut with many of the world’s leading symphony orchestras and most renowned conductors. In 2023, he was awarded the Opus Klassik prize for his recording of the complete Mozart piano sonatas for Sony.

On this occasion, Fujita will not be performing Mozart, but instead opens the evening with an early Beethoven sonata as the start of a rich and varied solo recital.

Beethoven’s piano sonatas are among the great monuments not only of the piano repertoire, but of classical music as a whole. At his concert in Mogens Dahl Concert Hall, Fujita will perform Beethoven’s First Piano Sonata — a work that still draws inspiration from Haydn and Mozart, yet foreshadows the bold innovations to come.

The piano sonata is a form that most composers have wished to explore. This includes Johannes Brahms, himself a highly accomplished pianist. It is therefore somewhat paradoxical that he wrote only three sonatas — all youthful works.

His Sonata No. 1, opus 1, like Beethoven’s, is in four movements and was praised by Robert Schumann, who also recommended it to his publisher. It is a work that radiates youthful daring and a desire to display virtuosity, drama, and technical finesse.

The programme also includes two shorter pieces by Richard Wagner: an early Albumblatt dedicated to Princess Metternich, and Franz Liszt’s famous transcription of Isolde’s Liebestod from the opera Tristan und Isolde — a tribute from friend and father-in-law.

Alban Berg’s Variations on an Original Theme is not a typical work for the composer — its tonality and melodic development are distinctly classical in nature.

The theme-and-variations form is a familiar one, which Felix Mendelssohn also embraced in his Variations sérieuses, comprising 17 variations on an original theme.

PROGRAMME

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827): Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 2 No. 1

Richard Wagner (1813–1883): "Ein Albumblatt" WWV 94

Alban Berg (1885–1935): 12 Variations on an Original Theme for piano (1908)

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–1847): Variations sérieuses, Op. 54

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Johannes Brahms (1833–1897): Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 1

Richard Wagner / Franz Liszt: Isolde’s Liebestod