Mitsuko Uchida receives the 2027 Léonie Sonning Music Prize

The Japanese-British pianist Mitsuko Uchida will receive the 2027 Léonie Sonning Music Prize at a concert at the DR Concert Hall on 30 May, where she will perform works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Schönberg. The day after the award ceremony, Mitsuko Uchida will meet piano students from the three Danish classical music academies at The Royal Danish Academy of Music. Here, she is taking part in ‘Private Passions’, where she and the students share and discuss recordings that have been of particular significance to them. The event will be followed by a Q&A session moderated by Professor Jens Elvekjær.

Later that evening, the piano students will give a concert featuring works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and composers from the Second Viennese School. Uchida’s visit will also serve as a meeting of generations centred on the art of the piano and the musical tradition that has been a recurring theme throughout her own artistic life.

Esben Tange, Chair of the Léonie Sonning Music Foundation, says: “Mitsuko Uchida is one of the most distinguished pianists in the world of classical music. With great personal integrity and an intensely emotional presence, she has, for more than four decades, produced brilliant interpretations of the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Arnold Schönberg in particular. 

With an intensely focused 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 audience. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that we welcome her back to Denmark after more than 20 years’ absence from the Danish concert scene.”

The Léonie Sonning Music Prize is one of the world’s leading classical music prizes and has been awarded since 1959 to an internationally recognised composer, musician, conductor or singer in the field of classical music. The prize is accompanied by a cash award of DKK 1,000,000.

Read more about the Léonie Sonning Music Prize

Photo: Justin Pumfrey