Mozart Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 21

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Mitsuko Uchida, widely regarded as the definitive Mozart pianist of our time, has released a third volume in her popular Grammy® Awardwinning series of Mozart piano concertos in which she herself directs The Cleveland Orchestra from the keyboard. Recorded live, as with the previous two albums, during performances in Cleveland s Severance Hall, this new disc couples two concertos that both end in exhilarating moto perpetuo finales. The youthfully daring, bustling Piano Concerto no. 9, written when Mozart had just turned 21, is nicknamed the Jeunehomme not, as once mistakenly believed, because of its composer s age but in misspelt tribute to a certain Mlle Jenamy. Dating from seven years later, the magical, melodious C major Concerto no. 21 was once tagged the Elvira Madigan after its achingly dissonant, astonishingly innovative central movement was used on the soundtrack of a 1960s Swedish movie. Long revered as an interpreter of Mozart s keyboard works, Mitsuko Uchida first recorded the complete cycle of the composer s solo piano concertos in a series of studio s with Jeffrey Tate conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. In re- these key works from her repertoire over 20 years later, Uchida takes on the dual role of performer-conductor. The results have proved revelatory, reinvigorating her famously cultivated and elegant style with a new fire and vitality that make these familiar pieces feel fresh and newly minted. Released in 2009 the year the UK-based Japanese-born pianist was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire the first volume in Uchida s new Mozart series received universally ecstatic reviews and went on to win a Grammy® Award. The Guardian called it a rapturously beautiful disc ; BBC Music Magazine praised a probing subtlety that defies concise description and sets this interpretation apart from any other known to me ; Gramophone declared that even a few bars will convince you that you are listening to one of the truly great artists of our time ; while The Times was left asking: Did even the great Clara Haskil play Mozart s piano music as wonderfully, as completely ... as Mitsuko Uchida? Volume 2, released in 2011 and coupling Concertos nos. 20 and 27, was received equally rapturously: All the things that made the first treasurable are there: the pearly, immaculate tone, the needlepoint precision, the graceful phrasing. The orchestra, too, is on terrific form , The Daily Telegraph; No pianist conveys the rapture of Mozart quite like Mitsuko Uchida , The Independent; When you have such a superior Mozart pianist directing Mozart concertos from the Steinway, and doing so with such ease and infectious pleasure in making music ... who wants (or needs) a separate conductor? , The Chicago Tribune.