Grote Pianisten: Mao Fujita speelt Rachmaninoff en Debussy

Mao Fujita

In March 2023, Mao Fujita made his debut in the Small Hall, and that same month he also made his debut in the Main Hall: in Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly. A magnificent Amsterdam debut. He could also be heard at the Concertgebouw in 2024, and now for the first time in the Great Pianists series. The Tokyo-born musician won first prize and several special prizes at the famous Clara Haskil Piano Competition. This was the starting point of a dazzling career. Fujita enjoys browsing through the rich piano repertoire and prefers to present his listeners with an array of timbres.

Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Beethoven and more

The magnificent works by Debussy and Rachmaninoff on this program were composed between 1907 and 1913, when Romanticism was approaching the end of its life cycle. In this time of renewal, both great masters played their own distinct roles. Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Sonata , inspired by Goethe’s Faust , depicts a world of longing and struggle. The composer had doubts about this grand yet excessive work, and approached it quite differently in his compact Second Piano Sonata : the same intense melancholy, but now condensed and controlled. Debussy’s path is different: his Images , Book 2, his narrative-less soundscapes inspired by Eastern art. Color and silence are the core concepts of his style—Romanticism, once upon a time… Fujita places these masterpieces alongside Beethoven’s penultimate Piano Sonata, a work in which Beethoven races through a rollercoaster of emotions. And that is not all: there are even more timbres in a sonata by Mozart, in Idylle by Glazunov, and in a miniature by Ravel. A magnificent showcase of sounds!