These days Mitsuko Uchida tends to give her London recitals in the Royal Festival Hall. That ensures that a bigger audience will be able to hear a pianist who, since she took British citizenship, can be legitimately regarded as a national treasure, but does little for the immediacy, let alone intimacy, of the occasion. In the perfectly scaled space of a concert hall like St George's in Bristol, though, Uchida's playing becomes even more compelling and directly communicative, with every detail and every keyboard colour registering without apparent effort.
Large-scale works by Schumann and Chopin dominated her programme. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the C sharp minor Op 27 No 2, formed a substantial preface, its first movement nudged exquisitely into existence. The other two movements were allowed to follow without any attempt by Uchida to mitigate their incongruity after such a rapt opening, so the whole work seemed much stranger and more mysterious than usual. The Schumann was Davidsbündlertänze, which was as lyrically intense in its more introspective moments as Uchida's recent recording of the work, the penultimate number the gentlest of cradle songs, but seeming more unbuttoned, more fantastical in its extrovert movements than in the studio.
Chopin's one-off Prelude in C sharp minor, more a nocturne than prelude, preceded the B minor sonata. Uchida gave an almost classical strictness to the sonata's opening movement, before turning the scherzo into a fleet, almost dreamlike vision, colouring the modulations of the Largo quite magically, and romping exuberantly through the rondo finale. Few pianists flaunt their virtuosity less than she does, but it was all superbly managed.
