Carnegie Hall

One of the most revered artists of our time, Mitsuko Uchida is known as a peerless interpreter of the works of Mozart, Schubert, R. Schumann, and Beethoven, as well as a devotee of the piano music of Berg, Schoenberg, Webern, and György Kurtág. She was Musical America’s 2022 Artist of the Year, music director of the 2024 Ojai Music Festival, and is a multi-year Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist. Her latest solo recording, of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, was nominated for a Grammy Award and won the 2022 Gramophone Piano Award.

Ms. Uchida has enjoyed close relationships with the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and The Cleveland Orchestra, with which she recently celebrated her 100th performance at Severance Hall. Conductors with whom she has worked closely include Bernard Haitink, Sir Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vladimir Jurowski, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, and Mariss Jansons.

Since 2016, Ms. Uchida has been an artistic partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which she is currently engaged in a multi-season touring project in Europe, Japan, and North America. She also appears regularly in recital in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York, and Tokyo, and is a frequent guest at the Salzburg Mozart Week and Salzburg Festival.

Ms. Uchida records exclusively for Decca, and her multi–award-winning discography includes the complete Mozart and Schubert piano sonatas. She is the recipient of two Grammy Awards—for Mozart concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra and for an album of lieder with Dorothea Röschmann—and her recording of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto with Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra won the Gramophone Award for Best Concerto.

A founding member of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and director of the Marlboro Music Festival, Ms. Uchida is a recipient of the Golden Mozart Medal from the Salzburg Mozarteum and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association. She has also been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Wigmore Hall Medal, and holds honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 2009, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

José Maria Blumenschein—a native of Freiburg, Germany, born to Brazilian parents—currently serves as first concertmaster of the WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra in Cologne after serving as associate concertmaster of The Philadelphia Orchestra for three seasons. During his tenure with the WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, he took two seasons off to perform as first concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Philharmonic.

A passionate leader, Mr. Blumenschein regularly performs with many orchestras and ensembles that include the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, London Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian State Opera, Staatskapelle Dresden, NDR Radiophilharmonie, and more.

Mr. Blumenschein is also a founding member of KammerMusikKöln, the first year-round chamber music series in Cologne founded by members of WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, and Cologne Conservatory.

Born in 1985, Mr. Blumenschein received his first violin lesson at age four in Freiburg, Germany, at the Pflüger Institute for Highly Gifted Children. In 1990, he began studies with Vera Kramarowa in Mannheim. In 2001, he was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with conductor and violinist Joseph Silverstein and served as concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Blumenschein has performed with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for almost two decades. Since 2023, he has shared the MCO’s concertmaster position with Matthew Truscott.

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO), founded in 1997, has established itself as one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras. Working as a “global collective,” the MCO is led by its members in collaboration with its Berlin-based management office. The musicians, who come from approximately 25 different countries, unite for each tour or project. The chamber music dialogue and unanimous act of listening shape the orchestra’s sound; it’s a philosophy inspired by the orchestra’s founding mentor Claudio Abbado that the MCO calls “the sound of listening.”

In the 2023–2024 season, the MCO performed with conductors Sir Simon Rattle, Maxim Emelyanychev, Tugan Sokhiev, Anja Bihlmaier, and with its Artistic Advisor Daniele Gatti, among others. The MCO is also known for its performances without a conductor; Artistic Partners Yuja Wang and Mitsuko Uchida, with whom the orchestra goes on tour several times a year, often lead the MCO from the piano. In the 2024–2025 season, the MCO joins the stage with Antonello Manacorda, Gianandrea Noseda, Elim Chan, Raphaël Pichon, and again with Maxim Emelyanychev, as well as with soloists Augustin Hadelich, Stéphane Degout, and Leif Ove Andsnes.

The orchestra maintains residencies in Berlin, Salzburg, and Lucerne; beginning in 2026, it will succeed the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Baden-Baden Easter Festival. In 2024, the MCO assumed the role of artistic director of Musikwoche Hitzacker.

The MCO continually explores new musical and social initiatives. Its program Feel the Music introduces music to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, while the MCO Academy allows orchestra members to share their expertise with the next generation of musicians. Additionally, the MCO’s school concerts foster introspection through the power of music. The MCO has also co-developed a series of XR concert formats. Since July 2024, some of the chamber music pieces produced in XR have been available in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra app for Apple Vision Pro.