Mao Fujita

With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, 26-year-old pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents that come along only rarely, equally at home performing Mozart as he is in the major romantic repertoire. On the occasion of his U.S. debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2023, the New York Times wrote, "As soon as his fingers touched the keys, waves of airy filigree, beautifully shaped and accomplished, emerged in almost continuous streams."

In the 2024-25 season, Fujita continued his impressive series of recital debuts at major festivals and venues across Europe, America, and Asia, including Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Luxembourg, Essen, Dresden, Linz, Prague, Lucerne, Chicago, Seoul, Taipei, Singapore, and Japan, alongside debuts with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, and at the BBC Proms with the Czech Philharmonic. Other highlights of the season included a return to Carnegie Hall for a solo recital at Stern Auditorium as well as a performance with the Wiener Symphoniker under Petr Popelka as part of the celebrations marking the reopening of the Theater an der Wien. 

Fujita has debuted with conductors including Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph Eschenbach, Marek Janowski, Andris Nelsons, Charles Dutoit, Ryan Bancroft, Domingo Hindoyan, Manfred Honeck, Jakub Hrůša, Vasily Petrenko, Lahav Shani, Dalia Stasevska, and Kazuki Yamada, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester, Münchner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, DSO Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wiener Symphoniker, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. He appears regularly in solo and chamber music recitals at major piano festivals and halls in Europe and Asia, performing with Renaud Capuçon, Antoine Tamestit, Kian Soltani, Zlatomir Fung, Marc Bouchkov, and Makoto Ozone, among others. 

Fujita is an exclusive Sony Classical International artist. In October 2022, his eagerly anticipated debut album on the Sony Classical label, a studio recording of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, was released to unanimous acclaim for its transparent sound worlds and vividly-detailed interpretation. He has performed the full sonata cycle at the Verbier Festival, Wigmore Hall, and across Japan’s major concert halls. His second album on the Sony Classical label, a wide-ranging and ambitious set entitled "72 Preludes" that champions the 24 Preludes of Chopin, Scriabin, and Yashiro, released in the autumn of 2024. 

Born in Tokyo, Fujita was still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017 when he won First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, along with the Audience Award, Prix Modern Times, and the Prix Coup de Coeur, all of which brought him to the attention of the international music community. He was also the silver medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where his special musical qualities received exceptional attention from a jury of leading musicians.