Mark Bolton

lilitufire and I finally got around to attending a classical concert here last night at Suntory Hall which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Thanks to British Airways, from whom I won the tickets in a promotion for their frequent fliers, we had tickets to a piano recital by Mitsuko Uchida. Uchida-san is a 58 year old female pianist based in London (of all places) and performs all around the world.

The programme for the evening followed the content of one of her more recent recordings (February 2006) (actually made in the concert hall at Snape on the Suffolk coast - a part of the world I know and love). The works being Beethoven's last three Piano Sonata's; 30 in E major(Opus 109) 1820, 31 in A flat major (Opus 110) 1821, and 32 in C minor (Opus 111) 1822.

While neither of us was feeling particularly sharp before we went into the concert, we both delighted in the performance - enjoying not only the music but appreciating the difficulty of the pieces, the great acoustics of Suntory Hall (the first purpose built concert hall in Japan) and the obvious enjoyment of the almost entirely Japanese packed house.

I'm no music reviewer, but I can agree with the NY Times review of a couple of years ago which talked about her performance of "this titanic trilogy ... explosions of fierce, raw power, with sharp rhythmic edges and a tone that bristled with steely and sometimes even strident energy." [Not generally adjectives you might ordinarily think of applying to a Japanese female performer.]