Congratulations, Mitsuko Uchida

Top talent ... Mitsuko Uchida in 2005. Photograph: Nir Elias/Reuters

Though some of the winning discs in the BBC Music Magazine's 2008 awards are unexpected, to say the least, there won't be much complaint from me about the one that has taken the top prize.

Making Mitsuko Uchida's thrilling recording of Beethoven's Op 101 and Hammerklavier sonatas the magazine's disc of the year is a wonderful tribute, not only to a pair of outstanding performances, from a year that was distinguished by a number of exceptional piano discs, but to a pianist who now has to be numbered among the finest in the world today.

What makes her success with this particular disc so satisfying too is that Uchida has never regarded herself as a Beethoven specialist. She preceded this exceptional disc, with one including the last three piano sonatas, but apart from a set of the concertos that is all the Beethoven she has recorded. In fact she doesn't really specialize at all - though relatively early in her career she did record all the Mozart piano concertos and sonatas and more recently surveyed the Schubert sonatas. Although she still regularly returns to both composers, she ranges widely in her recitals and recordings within a repertoire that stretches from Bach to Birtwistle. The programme she has been touring this spring, for instance, sandwiches a group of pieces by Gyorgy Kurtag between a Schubert sonata and Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques, and when she played the Hammerklavier at the Festival Hall in London three years ago, she opened her recital with Boulez's 12 Notations.

It's all part of an insatiable musical curiosity. Uchida is a familiar face in the audience at London concerts of all kinds, and she is one of the few pianists I know who after she has played a concerto regularly stays on to listen to the rest of a concert. Such enthusiasm has meant she has continued to grow and develop as an artist, ever since she made her London debut in 1975 after coming second in the Leeds Piano Competition; Dimitri Alexeev won that year, and Andras Schiff was in joint third place.

It gives her playing an irresistible combination of passionate involvement and intellectual rigour - whatever she plays, you always sense that Uchida has thought through the reasons for everything she does with it, but always in the best interests of communicating what she feels is the emotional essence of the music. It's a rare, and very precious gift.