Seoul Arts Center’s Concert Hall hosted a programme of poised Classicism and fevered Romanticism: Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 25 in C major, with Mao Fujita as soloist, followed after the interval by Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique under Myung‑whun Chung and the KBS Symphony Orchestra. It proved an evening in which clarity mattered as much as volume, and the most telling virtuosity came from a refusal to grandstand.
From the first bars of the Mozart, Fujita announced a pianist who writes in sentences rather than beating the bar line. His agogics recalled a typesetter’s kerning: micro‑adjustments of space between notes and silences that allowed the C major paragraphs to fall into a legible, natural spacing. Phrases joined to the next with conversational logic; the tempo felt chosen by the music itself. Tone was limpid and centred, articulation clean without brittleness. If one thought of Clara Haskil’s inward candour or Maria João Pires’ ease, the resemblance was one of spirit, not imitation.
Fujita’s own cadenza amplified the point. He avoided treble glitter and instead stacked short motifs in the middle and lower registers, creating depth and a sense of architecture. The image that came to mind was a finger drawing on misted glass: a quick, playful sketch that vanishes and, in disappearing, reveals a clearer face of Mozart. The cadenza read as part of the movement’s rhetoric, not a framed showpiece; when the orchestra re‑entered, the conversation resumed with disarming naturalness.
In the Andante, connection trumped display. With thin pedal and long breath, phrases bridged themselves, long‑bowed but never sagging; extended motifs did not dissipate but found their way neatly into the next clause. The Rondo finale kept its feet on the ground. Fujita resisted the temptation to turn the dance into a spin; the theme stepped forward with composure, buoyed by inner rhythm rather than surface glitter. Above all, there was the sense of improvisatory play that concert routine too often irons away.