Mao Fujita

Pianist Mao Fujita, born in Tokyo on November 28, 1998, began studying the instrument at age three under the guidance of Yuka Matsuyama and Gen Matsuyama. He completed his secondary training at the Tokyo College of Music High School before advancing to the institution’s special scholarship division for gifted piano students. Early recognition arrived with a first-prize victory in the junior category of Taiwan’s World Classic competition, followed by first-place finishes at the 2013 Rosario Marciano International Competition in Vienna and the 2017 Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland. From 2013 onward he recorded solo recitals for the Japanese branch of Naxos; his competition achievements reached a high point with the silver medal awarded at the sixteenth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia in 2019. In 2020 Naxos issued his album Chopin: Impromptus & Scherzos, after which he pursued additional studies with Kirill Gerstein in Berlin.

Appearances with leading ensembles soon followed, among them the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony. Festival engagements have included the Tsinandali Festival in the Republic of Georgia, the Riga-Jurmala Festival in Latvia, and Germany’s Klavier-Ruhr Festival. Signed by Sony Classical in 2021, Fujita released a complete survey of the Mozart piano sonatas the next year and presented the cycle live at Switzerland’s Verbier Festival in 2021. He is scheduled to make his Wigmore Hall debut in London at the close of the 2022–2023 season, with further 2023 dates set for the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and a European tour with Filarmonica della Scala. These milestones have positioned the artist, whose work embraces both Mozart and Romantic repertoire, among the most closely watched pianists of his generation.