Perth Concert Hall’s opening season featured quite a few 'Horsecross Exclusives" - major performances which you could catch only in Perth - and in 2006-07 we continue in that vein.

“One act we’re particularly thrilled to be presenting is the wonderful pianist Mitsuko Uchida on Wednesday 18 October in her first Scottish appearance in over a decade,” says Svend Brown, Creative Director of Classical Music. “These days Mitsuko is giving much of her time to explore Beethoven's late piano music, including the titanic last sonatas.”

Japanese by birth, Mitsuko trained in Vienna and has lived in London for more than two decades and is happy to call herself an Englishwoman.

Mitsuko was very young when nursery teachers noticed she had a liking for the piano. She would crawl onto the piano or harmonium whenever the opportunity arose and at home she took a close interest in her older brother’s piano lessons, and was soon taking them herself. She was then enrolled in the junior section of a music school. However, when she was 12 the family moved to Europe, a move which Mitsuko says was a life-changing one.

“Right after my 12th birthday my parents left for Vienna, and I have never looked back. If that had not happened I might never have had a career as a musician,” admits Mitsuko.

“Within weeks of arriving in Vienna my father had found me a teacher at what was then called the Hochschule für Musik. Up until then I had been an ordinary kid, whom everyone said was musical attending weekend piano school. Overnight I became a music student, but I had no notion of what it meant to be a musician. That didn't change, even after I'd given my first recital at 14, my teacher said, ‘Now you know you are going to be a musician, don't you?’ And I said. ‘No!’ He was furious.”

Mitsuko’s career has been built on the greatest music of the past: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Debussy, and the composers of the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, for whom she has deep respect and affection. She has also engaged with some of the mightiest music of our own time, being particularly proud of her association with Harrison Birtwistle.

The blend of respect and affection that Mitsuko commands from the public is unique to her, but neither adulation nor the demands on her time will be allowed to disrupt that 'perfect balance' she has always cultivated.

“I understood completely that I was not going to be the most highly paid musician,” says Mitsuko. “I was not going to be the most famous. I was not going to cash in or play as much as possible. I wanted to keep my life my own and not be a great unhappy pianist. I need time to myself to relax. If you keep the balance right, nothing is better than a musician's life. Sometimes I'm asked if I would pay to give concerts, and I would - but instead they pay me. Aren't I lucky!”

Although the Uchida family moved to Cologne when she was in her teens, Mitsuko returned to Vienna at 16, this time with a determination to become a musician.

She studied with Richard Hauser, then in his last years and shortly before his death he asked her to be his assistant. But by the time she graduated and began winning prizes, Mitsuko was ready to leave Vienna. Rebellion, she thinks, is natural and healthy in young people.

“Vienna, musically, is wonderful. My time there was crucial. But what I minded particularly then was the idea that the Viennese way of playing music was always the right way. How do they know how Mozart is to be played? Even now, I don't know, and I'm asking the questions every day. They thought they knew, because there was a tradition. There are many traditions.”

She had, she says, no clear idea where she wanted to live. Although America had some attractions, particularly the chance to work with Leon Fleisher, she decided to move to London, feeling its musical society to be more open to diverse ideas than other artistic centres. After 30 years in London, she doubts whether she will ever leave.

Mitsuko Uchida's 1982 recital series of Mozart sonatas at Wigmore Hall made her name in London. Her international reputation was also founded on Mozart, through recordings of the complete sonatas and then the piano concertos.

“Right from the start, I decided I would record only those pieces that, on my deathbed, I might regret never having recorded. In today's world, you are pushed towards crossover.”

Opposite her London mews house is her studio containing the concert grands she uses for practising, recording and sometimes public performance, as well as smaller model Steinways and some early pianos. Her interest in 18th and 19th century instruments is one of the least-known aspects of her musicianship. She has long-standing but so far unfulfilled invitations to play Mozart concertos on an instrument of the period, acceptance of which will depend on her finding the right combination of instrument and venue.

As with everything else in her life, her tastes in leisure activities are precise.
“I don't have a car. I don't need a big house with a big garden, or a country house. I have my house, my studio, my pianos, but there are so many things I don't need. I like early Worcester porcelain, and I drink my tea out of that every day. Beyond that the only luxury in my life is red wine.”

Mitsuko Uchida plays Beethoven at Perth Concert Hall on Wednesday 18 October at 7.30pm. Tickets £25 - £9 + concessions. To book call 0845 612 6319 or log onto www.horsecross.co.uk

Interview from www.mitsukouchida.com