Mitsuko Uchida was born in Japan in 1948 and moved to Vienna at age 12 when her father became Japanese ambassador to Austria. She studied at the Vienna Academy of Music with Richard Hauser, Wilhelm Kempff, and Stefan Askenase, and gave her first Musikverein recital at 14. She placed first at the 1969 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna and took second prize at the 1970 Chopin Competition.

Uchida is internationally regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, and has served as artist-in-residence with the Cleveland Orchestra and co-artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival. She won a Grammy Award in 2011 for her Mozart piano concerto recordings, was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009, and received the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal in 2012.