Sony likes to make a splash with its new signees – remember Igor Levit’s last five Beethoven sonatas (11/13) or Arcadi Volodos’s ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ (4/99)? Still only 23, Mao Fujita is already something of a veteran of the recording studio, following competition successes (Clara Haskil in 2017 and second prize at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition). So the fact that he has recorded the complete Mozart keyboard sonatas should not perhaps faze us. His journey into this repertoire is fascinating: he recalls being bewitched by Horowitz playing the C major Sonata, K330, on his 1986 ‘Live in Moscow’ recording (DG, 12/86). Fast-forward to last year, when Fujita set the sonatas down over just 11 days. My comparisons, incidentally, may be musical big guns, but it’s meant as a compliment that Fujita should be in such august company.

The first thing that strikes is his affection for this music, which shines out of every bar: the care with which he approaches every sonata, whether mature or early, is consistently impressive. Fujita’s sound world is very much at one with Mozart’s – with a translucence of tone that brings the music sparklingly to life. He likes ornaments, too, often on repeats; generally they’re tasteful, though occasionally I found them slightly awkwardly applied.

To the very first sonata, K279, Fujita brings a driving, bubbling quality, and he keeps a flowing momentum through the Andante, too (less poetic than Uchida), while the finale is daringly swift. He’s arguably faster than the Allegro tempo marking and, though it’s exciting, it’s perhaps a little too breathless. William Youn, slightly slower, brings more character to it. That said, Fujita offers a youthful élan that matches the teenage composer well – strikingly so in the finales that are marked presto, particularly that of K281, where he’s alive to Mozart’s skittering shifts of direction. In K282, with its unorthodox sequence of movements, the opening Adagio has an attractive beseeching quality (where Uchida’s extreme raptness won’t be to all tastes), even if his Menuetto and finale are slightly less characterfully done. K283’s opening movement sounds just a touch uncertain but the second movement is beautifully haloed, with sensitive phrasing.

Fujita responds to Mozart’s theme-and-variation movements with particular style and imagination, whether in the concluding one of K284, where elegance is the watchword for the theme itself, the silences absorbed into the musical line, and plenty of contrast (and brilliance where required) in the variations themselves, while the slowing to Adagio cantabile for the penultimate one is moving indeed. Similarly, in those that open K331, he brings to the theme a musing quality that never lapses into self-consciousness, and that naturalness underpins everything that follows. Some might make more of the pleading quality of some of the phrasing of Var 1 but in its place Fujita brings out a strong sense of narrative. There’s a similar inevitability to his Menuet (Uchida and Pires are both more reflective); only the closing Alla turca slightly disappoints, sounding a little matter-of-fact.

Perhaps inevitably there are some places where Fujita hasn’t perhaps formed quite as strong a view of the music as he will undoubtedly do as time progresses. The C minor K457 is a case in point: the drama of the outer movements could be more focused than here, but then I do have Ólafsson’s extraordinary proto-Beethovenian vision emblazoned on my mind, while the middle movement is a little tentative. Fujita is more beseeching than Ólafsson in the opening of K545 (the dangerously misnamed Sonata facile) but his ornamentation can sometimes intrude, something I also found in the Andante (Pires is unassailable here, bringing every phrase fresh colouring). How fast the finale should go is down to taste: for me Ólafsson’s glee is very infectious, but Fujita – faster still – is perhaps too breathless. The slow movement of the pentultimate sonata, K570, on the other hand, is a rare instance of being a little on the ponderous side: interestingly Pires and Uchida are slower in tempo but their legato creates a sense of sinuous line. The outer movements, however, come over compellingly. We end on a high, with panache aplenty in K576, Fujita’s a speedier hunt scene than Uchida’s, bringing a real relish to Mozart’s unexpected turns of direction, particularly in the development. The slow movement is full of song and the finale has an easy virtuosity, its understatedly quiet sign-off beautifully done. There is, as you’ll have gathered, much to impress here from an artist already making waves.