With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which come along only rarely, equally at home in Mozart as the major romantic repertoire.
Born in Tokyo, Fujita was still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017 when he took 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, which first 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 the jury of leading musicians as well as Valery Gergiev, who has invited him on a number of international tours since; in Tokyo in 2019, he jumped in at two days’ notice to perform the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev to rapturous acclaim.
Fujita has been invited to appear in recital at major international festivals including the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Verbier Festival, Tsinandali and Riga-Jurmala Festivals among others. Recent and upcoming orchestral highlights include performances with the Munich Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Mariinsky Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic.
In November 2021, Fujita signed an exclusive multi-album deal with Sony Classical International. The new partnership will see Fujita explore many facets of the repertoire across several releases, starting with an eagerly-anticipated studio recording of Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas, planned for release in Autumn 2022.
Starting piano lessons at the age of three, Fujita won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan, and became a laureate of numerous national and international competitions such as the Rosario Marciano International Piano Competition in Vienna (2013), Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (2015), and the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition (2016).
