Classical Session: Mao Fujita

“The works of Chopin are very important to us pianists,” Fujita tells Apple Music Classical. “But the Polonaise No. 6, Op. 53 is particularly famous.” However, it’s a piece that he has never recorded before. “I wanted a new challenge,” he reveals, “and I chose it because I wanted to showcase my own ideas about this music, including decisions of where to take pauses and how to play the rhythms. It’s a piece that evokes beautiful imagery.” The second piece in Fujita’s Classical Session is Ichiro Nodaira’s At the Ball (Au bal), recorded here for the first time. Fujita first encountered this short piece when he was asked to perform it in a competition at the age of seven or eight. But it was only recently that he encountered the score again. “It had such sublime harmony that I immediately fell in love with it,” he explains. For Fujita, Nodaira’s piece makes the perfect companion piece for the Polonaise. “Chopin’s piano works were mainly performed in salons, and I realised that At the Ball was reminiscent of many of those salon pieces. Everything about it is so pure, and so beautiful.”