The Japanese pianist will release her first album in six years on 8 April 2022
Multi-Grammy award-winning pianist Mitsuko Uchida will release a new recording of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations this spring on Decca Classics.
Among the most celebrated living interpreters of the music of the Classical period, Uchida captures on disc her interpretation of one of the greatest works in the piano repertoire. The Diabelli Variations stand alongside Bach’s Goldberg Variations as the pinnacle of the variation form. In 1819, the dilettante composer and publisher Antonio Diabelli commissioned around 50 of the leading composers in Vienna (including Franz Schubert) to compose variations on a theme he had written. Among them, Beethoven was at first dismayed by the quality of the theme (describing it as a “cobbler’s patch”) and scathing of such collaborative models of work. Yet, working intermittently on the set for six years, Beethoven was able to transform the mundane theme into one of the most sublime pieces of piano music ever written.
The new recording of the work was made at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, a concert hall with which Uchida feels a strong affinity.
Find out more about Uchida and her upcoming concerts here.
Uchida appeared on the cover of Pianist 104 in 2018.
