Born in Tokyo in 1998, pianist Mao Fujita’s innate musical sensitivity and natural artistry make him a rare and exceptional talent, equally at home with Mozart’s works as with the great Romantic repertoire. He works with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors and has won numerous competitions, including the silver medal at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2019. Of his US debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2023,  ›The New York Times‹ wrote of Fujita: »As soon as his fingers touched the keys, waves of airy filigree emerged, beautifully shaped and perfected, in almost uninterrupted streams«.

In the 2025/26 season, Fujita will continue his impressive series of appearances at leading festivals and concert halls in Europe, America and Asia. This series includes a recital tour of North America and tours of Asia and Europe with the Filarmonica della Scala under Myung-Whun Chung, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Jaap van Zweden, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko and the Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi. Fujita is also in demand internationally as a chamber music partner, performing with Renaud Capuçon, Leonidas Kavakos, Emanuel Ax, Kirill Gerstein, Antoine Tamestit, Kian Soltani and the Hagen Quartet, among others. Fujita is an exclusive artist with Sony Classical International where he recently released preludes by Chopin and Scriabin, as well as the world premiere recording of Akio Yashiro’s ›24 Preludes‹.

Estonian conductor and Grammy Award winner Paavo Järvi has been Artistic Director of The Deutsche Kammer­philharmonie Bremen, his only German orchestra, since 2004. One highlight of the collaboration were the celebrated concerts of the Beethoven cycle, which received critical acclaim worldwide. Järvi received numerous awards for the recordings, including the ›Echo Klassik‹ as ›Conductor of the Year‹ and the prestigious ›Annual Prize of the German Record Critics‹.

Following the Beethoven project, he and the orchestra tackled the symphonic works of Schumann and Brahms, which received similarly enthusiastic reviews. Paavo Järvi is also Principal Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Advisor to the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the Järvi Summer Festival in Pärnu, Estonia, and since 2019/20 Artistic Director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. He regularly makes appearances as guest conductor with orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras, the Staatskappelle Dresden and the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago and the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, he was named ›Artist of the Year‹ by the renowned British magazine Gramophone and the French magazine Diapason. In 2019, he received the ›Opus Klassik‹ as ›Conductor of the Year‹.