Japanese pianist Mao Fujita makes his Canadian debut in the Vancouver Playho this Sun afternoon, with a program devoted to a single composer: Mozart. Fujita was born in one thousand nine hundred ninety-eighth in Tokyo. In the concert seasons just before the pandemic, he did rather well in competitions, including Switzerland’s Clara Haskil Contest in two thousand-seventeenth, he won both first prize and the audience prize, and Russia’s International Tchaikovsky Contest in two thousand-nineteenth, he took silver. Nearly all pianists revere Mozart — Canada’s Glenn Gould being the exception that proves the rule. Fewer pianists comprise Mozart in their recitals. An all-Mozart program is scarce indeed, particularly a twentysomething pianist making his way on the world’s concert platforms. I recently enjoyed a delightful Zoom chat with Fujita at his Tokyo home, and queried him about his specific affinity for Mozart. “When I won the Tchaikovsky contest in two thousand-nineteenth, I wondered what to do next,” he said. “There are so many pianists doing Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich. I decided to do something different those wonderful composers/pianists. So I considered the repertoire for the following few years, and finally decided to focus on Mozart. “In two thousand seventeen I won the Clara Haskil Competition, a very necessary event for me.” Romanian-born Haskil (1895-1960) was a celebrated exponent of keyboard music the classical and early romantic eras. Fujita took note, and began to study and restudy Mozart. Article content “Then the pandemic happened, and suddenly there was nothing, number competitions, number concerts. But I kept studying and practised every day,” he said. “Then Martin Engström (head of the Verbier Festival in Switzerland) offered me a chance to carry out Mozart. I accepted and got to play all the sonatas, and then had the exceptional excellent fortune to record them for Sony.”