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This review is included here for completeness more than anything. To coin a phrase: you can't please everybody; not even Nobuyuki can in the face of people in the habit of making up their minds before the evidences are in.
It's odd, but for whatever reason, the Dallas newspapers and the Fort Worth papers columnists never took to Nobuyuki's, even at the height of his popularity during the 2009 Cliburn Competition, as noted in the documentary "A Surprise in Texas."
Following is one of the most negative reviews of Nobuyuki's performances. In my personal opinion, these Texas writers are full of themselves, blindsided by their negativity, and never get Nobuyuki Tsujii - they don't get the lyricism of his playing and they seem to favor technicalities. The program performed is one to die for -- and it's totally wasted on this critic. It's a crime to call Nobu's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise work-a-day bland. I would like to hear Mr. critic's version of them.
(However, I have since looked up the writing of Wayne Gay, who blogged during the Cliburn -- he was generally positive about Nobu during the competition. It is possible that Nobu was too frazzled by the Nobu fever since his Cliburn victory to prepare for this performance - I wasn't there to witness it, nor was I even aware of Nobu at that time.)
Nobuyuki Tsujii disappoints with too-familiar program at Bass Performance Hall
02:42 PM CDT on Thursday, September 24, 2009
By WAYNE LEE GAY / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
FORT WORTH – A sturdy, sure technique fueled Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii's march to a gold medal in the 2009 Cliburn Competition in June. At the same time, his blindness won him international interest and admiration.
Returning to Fort Worth to open the Cliburn at the Bass concert series on Tuesday, Tsujii unfortunately did not appear ready for the sort of career a Cliburn gold medal implies.
The choice of program – loaded with overly familiar works including Beethoven's Moonlight and Appassionata sonatas – was a large part of the problem.
Shoving two of Beethoven's darkest creations up against each other is a bad idea for any pianist, if for no other reason than the overwhelming gloom contained in them. Following up, immediately after intermission, with Chopin's equally pessimistic Ballade in G minor merely deepened the effect.
In a second half devoted entirely to Chopin, Tsujii adhered to a bleakly monotonous tonal quality and an often overly heavy left hand.
A set of lively mazurkas from Opus 24 provided the unlikely high point of the evening, largely because they lend themselves well to Tsujii's almost nonchalant approach. Unfortunately, on the two nocturnes from Opus 27, he continued to avoid any real variety of color.
The finale of the recital at Bass Performance Hall, Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, emerged with workaday blandness. In response to an enthusiastic but far from unanimous ovation, Tsujii brought out Chopin's Berceuse, the almost invincible charm of which nearly succumbed to the pianist's unwillingness to explore any variety of tone, and the Revolutionary Etude, presented with cold speed and bravura.
Denton-based writer Wayne Lee Gay has covered classical music and dance in North Texas for nearly three decades.
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