How I Caught "Nobu Fever"

The documentary was “A surprise in Texas” by Peter Rosen.   Its subject is the thirteenth Van Cliburn Piano Competition that took place in Fort Worth, Texas, in the spring of 2009.

I am usually ten years behind in catching a phenomenon.  Thanks to Rosen’s spellbinding work, this time it only took me a little more than a year to catch up with the rest of the world. 

My awareness of Tsujii began as I first noticed, on the television screen, a metronome swaying of the pianist’s head as he played, eyes closed, seemingly in a world of his own.  The music coming from his fingers was of unspeakable sweetness and beauty.   

It was with a profound shock that, late in the show, I came to realize that this pianist, so young and so obviously gifted, is blind (from birth, as I was to learn).  How, you can’t help but be taken aback, does he manage to position his flying fingers to strike the ivories with such precision, and how, without sight, did he learn to play those diabolically tangled tendrils of notes in masterpieces as impossible to master as Liszt’s La Campanella and Beethoven’s HammerKlavier?

So clueless was I that at the time of the viewing of the documentary, I had no idea of the outcome of the competition.  I had heard of the Cliburn competition, of course, but never had an opportunity to follow it.  On television that Wednesday evening, Tsujii increasingly becomes the focus of the documentary as the camera dotes on him as much as all the people surrounding him: his mother, his interpreters, his Texas host family, extending to the audiences in the concert hall.  Sentimental favorites don’t win major awards, I thought.  By the time the silver medalist and the first gold medalist had been announced on the show, I braced myself for Tsujii’s imminent defeat and disappointment. 

Thus it was that my heart skipped a beat when Van Cliburn utters the name of the second gold medalist.  As the climax of Nobuyuki's Cliburn performance of  Rachmaninoff’s Concerto Number 2 soars on the soundtrack of the documentary while the screen shows him, trophy in hand and tears streaming from his sightless eyes, I was overcome with emotions and irretrievably lost to "Nobu Fever."