Conversation with Artist in Residence Mitsuko Uchida

Uchida residency: performances, conversation events, and unlimited opportunities for growth and inspiration.

Uchida, renowned internationally as a peerless interpreter of composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, will serve as Cal Performances’ Artist in Residence in March 2024. As part of her residency, Uchida will give two performances: with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for two Mozart piano concertos as she directs from the piano; and with longtime collaborator, tenor Mark Padmore, in Schubert’s final song cycle, Winterreise. The residency will also include public discussions with UC Berkeley students and Cal Performances audience members. Jeremy Geffen sums up the organization’s excitement: “Uchida has been on a lifelong search for truth and beauty—one that has enriched audiences around the world. This cherished artist’s extensive experience and abundant artistic vision will undoubtedly catalyze moments of profound learning, understanding, and enjoyment on our campus and throughout our community.” In this video, the two discuss Uchida’s history with classical music, with Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and with Mark Padmore, as well as what she hopes to teach and to learn from Berkeley audiences, particularly young people.

Transcript

Jeremy Geffen:
It is with great pleasure that I introduce now our Artist in Residence next season, Mitsuko Uchida. Mitsuko, what a pleasure it is to have you with us now, and especially in March of 2024.

Mitsuko Uchida:
I look forward very much. And now I started thinking what else I could do for you.

Jeremy Geffen:
What an extraordinary honor it is to have you. Those who were in the audience for your recital back in 2014, as well as your performance with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Zellerbach Hall in March of ’21, will be extraordinarily excited, as will those who haven’t yet made it to either. But to be able to see two sides of you, especially in what have become very important artistic collaborations to you, is very meaningful, and extremely meaningful that you have chosen Berkeley as the place at which to display those. So, I wanted to ask you, first of all, about your partnership with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Mitsuko Uchida:
Well, it started one day slowly. But it sounds funny to say, “One day slowly.” I thought, I wanted to do some Mozart concerti with a chamber orchestra and I have heard good things about Mahler. And I heard some performance of, actually very good one. I thought, “Okay, I try to ask them.” And in my life, it has been very often that I ask somebody, and not that somebody asked me to do. So, this was one of them. And they said yes.

And we started quietly in Spain somewhere…we rehearsed for days on end which was very nice. And I realized their commitment and love of music, but also commitment of wanting to play together, with somebody who was—well, I just floated in—but who was a newcomer, was quite amazing. And I still think so, when I sit with them, I get together with them—and of course by now we are a family, I feel I came home. At the beginning it is a little bit edgy, and this is sticking out, and that edge is sticking out. But in no time, we are back to somewhere where we were and then we develop from there. Each time, every concert, we’d repeat concerts, but we play, and that, there is—All I can say is that it’s the commitment plus their love for the music. For example, yes, and I really feel that when we get together, and even if there are new people or not, but we say hello to each other, every single one—the one who hasn’t been there for four years, five years, of course, I remember how these people played, you see. So it is an event that, for everybody, it is so important to play this concert. This is the starting point, and that is the best starting point for any group.

Jeremy Geffen:
I’m always interested that you often come back to repertoire that means a great deal to you. And the fact that the Mozart concerti have been part of your, not just your repertoire, but your vocabulary for decades now.

Mitsuko Uchida:
Oh yes. And so long that I don’t even want to talk about it. But I mean, seriously, as real repertoire of my life as such, look, 40 years. But beforehand, I collected them one by one for quite a long time. So, it took me a long time for every music, but the one that stayed and stayed and stayed are Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. And Bach, always hiding in the background, because I feel still so inferior towards Bach.

Jeremy Geffen:
Let’s talk for a moment about your other concert, which represents a different partnership. Also, I don’t wanna say a new partnership, because you and Mark Padmore have been working together for a while, but—

Mitsuko Uchida:
Quite a while, but it is newish compared to some people that were in the past that I worked with. But still, it’s sort of five, six years, something like that. But it was like, as I described, I walked after him and said, “Can I not work with you?” And he said, ah, but he didn’t say, “Why not?” That was somebody else. Well, he said, “oh,” but he was French, let’s put it that way. And it started like that. And then we probably ran through the Lacrimosa and then the Winterreise, and then something… So without much prospect of concerts, and we didn’t talk about concerts, we just work. And I adored him anyway from the start, for a long time before I approached him. And why I approached him is probably when I heard Heine Lieder of Schumann. Because I felt I never really understood them, and how he sounded, I felt as if I got it finally. So, the next concert he was playing in London—he was singing in London in the Wimbledon Hall—I just went and…they let me in at the end. So then I cornered him. And so it started.

Jeremy Geffen:
Well it definitely seems like that sort of partnership. You mentioned something a moment ago that has been a theme, something that I see when I come to visit you in Vermont every summer, but the role that young people, that young performers, that young thinkers play in your life. And here we are on the campus of UC Berkeley, one of the great public universities of the world, and I wondered if you could speak to what they give you.

Mitsuko Uchida:
Well they, the young people, give me a lot of things, but among them there are lots of misunderstandings—the same misunderstandings, or similar misunderstandings, as I was having. But when you are making music, somebody plays in a wrong way very beautifully. I love it and I want to try to make it into something that it is true. And for that, I sort of mix and give and push, and then they push back, I hope. But what makes it also so refreshing is that, well, carelessness in life. They haven’t done all of these awful things—they think, but they haven’t. Freshness of ideas that you have never thought of, or that you have forgotten to think, that confronts you all the time. And also having to live with the community, with the ideas of other people, and the young ones who have to still develop. But the point is, I am constantly developing. If you stop developing, that is the end, is what I think. So therefore, it is fantastic communication that you have, and that I really, really love. And I learned, probably in Marlboro, that by giving something, the giving actually gives me more than if I took from somebody. And that is such an enriching sort of situation. You have given, and it is not for, just that; you have given, and then something happens to you as well. So that’s all I can explain as relationships with people.

Jeremy Geffen:
Then something that you, a comment you actually just made a few minutes ago about what we as the audience perceive as empty space. Before a performance begins, there is silence from our perspective, but what does that, what’s going on with you?

Mitsuko Uchida:
I am catching that moment of silence, that I can step into. You don’t just step, boom, and play. I try to catch that, gather that silence. Sometimes it’s here, sometimes it’s somewhere else. Some music you have to just throw it out, but a lot of the time I’m waiting for that silent.

Jeremy Geffen:
Well, thank you for making the time for this interview. And most importantly, thank you for making the time to come spend so much time with us next March.

Mitsuko Uchida:
But I have to thank you for giving me that time, and for the invitation.