Listen to Maria João Pires' vibrant playing with Claudio Abbado on her 2012 recording of the Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, K. 595 (1791), or the intensity she finds in the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 (1785), and it’s not hard to hear why the Portuguese pianist is considered one of today's finest interpreters of Mozart. One of her most extraordinary performances of the D minor concerto took place with conductor Riccardo Chailly in Amsterdam in 1999, when after realizing during the orchestra’s opening bars that she’d prepared the wrong piece, she switched and faultlessly joined in on cue. Such is the virtuosity of a pianist who, born in Lisbon in 1944, began giving public recitals at the age of five. In Romantic repertoire, too, Pires has set the benchmark—her 1996 recording of the Chopin nocturnes is still among the very best, capturing the poetic depths and free-flowing lyricism of these intimate salon works, while her 2014 recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos 2 and 3 with Daniel Harding embraces the full range of the composer's dramatic expression. Although rumors of Pires’ retirement have been circulating for some years, she shows no signs of stopping and continues to perform the core repertoire of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert to enraptured audiences.