Mitsuko Uchida receives the Léonie Sonning Music Prize 2027
Japanese-British pianist Mitsuko Uchida is the recipient of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize 2027 and the DKK 1 million (approximately €134,000) that accompanies the award. For more than four decades, she has occupied a unique position in the world of classical music, renowned for her intense and deeply personal interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Schoenberg in particular.
Mitsuko Uchida grew up in Japan, but at the age of 12 moved with her family to Vienna, where her encounter with classical music proved decisive. She later studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and the music of Vienna has remained a constant thread throughout her artistic life.
After achieving top rankings in a number of major international piano competitions, she made her international breakthrough in 1982 with concert series in London and Tokyo, performing the complete Mozart piano sonatas. Since then, she has appeared at many of the world’s leading concert venues and has enjoyed close collaborations with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as conductors including Kurt Sanderling, Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle.
Mitsuko Uchida has been based in London since the early 1970s. From there, an extensive international concert schedule takes her each year to North America, Japan and major European musical centres.
Motivation
With the Léonie Sonning Music Prize 2027, Mitsuko Uchida is honoured for an artistic career that, over more than four decades, has established her as one of the most distinguished pianists in the world of classical music.
Esben Tange, Chair of the Board of the Léonie Sonning Music Foundation, says:
“Mitsuko Uchida is one of the most exceptional pianists in the world of classical music. With great personal integrity and an intensely emotional presence, she has spent more than four decades creating luminous interpretations of the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Arnold Schoenberg in particular.
With her extraordinarily concentrated style of playing, in which extremes – from the quietest moments to dramatic outbursts – often come into play, Mitsuko Uchida is able to create magical moments for her audiences. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that we welcome her back to Denmark after an absence of more than 20 years from the Danish concert stage.”
Mitsuko Uchida says of receiving the Léonie Sonning Music Prize:
“I am deeply honored to receive the prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize and look highly forward to being in Copenhagen soon.”
Prize concert and an encounter with the next generation
Mitsuko Uchida will receive the Léonie Sonning Music Prize at a prize concert at the DR Concert Hall on 30 May 2027. The concert will also mark a long-awaited return to the Danish concert stage: Uchida has not performed in Denmark for more than 20 years.
At the prize concert, she will give a recital featuring music by four composers who have played a central role in her artistic life: Joseph Haydn, Arnold Schoenberg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert. The programme includes Haydn’s Variations in F minor, Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, Mozart’s Rondo in A minor and Schubert’s four Impromptus D 935. The concert thus traces a clear line back to Vienna and to a repertoire that has accompanied Uchida since her student years.
Uchida’s visit to Copenhagen will extend beyond the prize concert itself. The following day, 31 May, she will meet piano students from Denmark’s three classical music conservatoires at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.
Here, she will take part in Private Passions, where she and the students will share and discuss recordings that have held particular significance for them. The event will be followed by a Q&A moderated by pianist and professor Jens Elvekjær.
Later that evening, young piano students will perform music by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and composers of the Second Viennese School. Uchida’s visit will therefore also create an encounter between generations centred on the art of classical piano playing and the musical tradition that has been a constant thread throughout her own artistic life.
