Mitsuko Uchida is a British pianist of Japanese origin. Born in Atami, Japan, she began studying piano in early childhood. At 12, she moved with her parents to Vienna, where she studied at the Vienna Music Academy with Richard Hauser, then with Wilhelm Kempff and Stefan Askenase. After her father returned to Japan, Uchida remained in Vienna and continued her studies with Maria Curcio. She gave her first concert at the Vienna Musikverein at age 14.
Uchida placed tenth at the 1968 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, won first prize at the 1969 Beethoven Competition in Vienna, and placed second at the 1970 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and the 1975 Leeds International Piano Competition. She later served on the jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1983. Her performances of all of Mozart’s sonatas and all 21 of his piano concertos brought her international recognition.
In 1998, Uchida became the first woman to direct the Ojai Music Festival in California. She was a guest artist with the Cleveland Orchestra from 2002 to 2007 and with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2010. She has conducted the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano. She is artistic director, alongside pianist Richard Goode, of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont, and is a member of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, which supports young musicians internationally. She became a British citizen and lives in London.
Uchida’s repertoire includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern. Her recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas received a Gramophone Award in 1989. Her performance of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra under Pierre Boulez won a Gramophone Award in 2001. Awards also recognized her performances of Beethoven’s complete piano concertos with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra under Kurt Sanderling, Beethoven’s late sonatas, Schubert’s piano works, and Debussy’s Études. In 2011, she received a Grammy Award for her recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 23 and 24 with the Cleveland Orchestra.
Her honors include the Suntory Music Award (1986), appointment as an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001 and a Commander in 2009, BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumentalist of the Year award (2008), and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the University of Oxford (2009). She received the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal in 2013 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2015, and was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame.