The world-famous pianist, Mitsuko Uchida, gave a breath-taking performance on 11th January, in a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre in aid of Oxford’s Music Faculty. Uchida delighted a packed audience with some of the most captivating works in the Romantic piano repertoire. Her tiny frame, bent protectively over the keyboard, as if it were some precious object, belied her powerful playing in the opening bars of her exquisite interpretation of Beethoven’s Sonata in E minor Op 90. The typically Beethovenian dramatic contrasts in this work were surpassed in musical audacity by the next work in the programme, Schumann’s somewhat bipolar collection of eighteen dances, known collectively as Davidsbündlertänze. Uchida imbued each short ‘character’ piece with its own colour and vitality, balancing the more fierce and ferocious dances with restrained, graceful gestures in the calmer pieces. Not once did she lose her remarkable poise and sensitivity.
The second half of the programme allowed Uchida to reveal her gentle touch and emotional depth to its full capacity. The piano sang out in Chopin’s rhapsodic C# minor Prelude, its dream-like, tender qualities giving rise to a warm intimacy in its performance, which was unattainable in the more overtly dramatic repertoire of the first half. Squeezing as much tone as possible from each note of Chopin’s melodic lines, and leading a firm path through the composition’s chromatically wandering passages, Uchida addressed every note of this piece with meticulous articulation. The final work of the evening, Chopin’s Sonata in B minor Op 58 confirmed her virtuosity. Uchida’s slender fingers seemed simply to graze the keys, so soft were the cascading scalar passages in the finale. This was a wonderful evening, and it is an honour to have such a distinguished musician support the Faculty of Music.
