interview-6
From Japanese - it's frustrating not to be able to read Japanese, but here are a couple of interviews from over there - there are probably dozens others:
Yorimo interview
https://yorimo.yomiuri.co.jp/servlet/Satellite?c=Yrm0301_P&cid=1221746598038
this is an interview series by a Newspaper website (you need to register to view it)
This is a lengthy interview of Nobuyuki conducted after his Cliburn win. Unfortunately, it is all in Japanese.
As it is, you can see some nice photos fo Nobu.
Here is another interview published in this same paper, about Nobu's "Pictures at an Exhibition" CD
https://yorimo.yomiuri.co.jp/csa/Yrm0402_C/1221758292850
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The following article appeared during Nobu's 2010 Fall U.S. tour
Award-winning blind pianist to play Clearwater's Capitol Theatre
By John Fleming, Times Performing Arts Critic
In Print: Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Blind musicians are not unheard of in pop music — Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles top the list — but classical music is another story. To be a classical musician means performing complex notated scores, and it's hard to conceive how a visually impaired person could learn and play such works at the highest level.
That's why the story of Nobuyuki Tsujii is so remarkable. Blind since birth, the 22-year-old Japanese pianist was the co-gold medalist of the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, sharing the prize with Haochen Zhang of China.
"He was absolutely miraculous," Van Cliburn himself said after Tsujii played a program of Chopin, Debussy and Liszt. "His performance had the power of a healing service. It was truly divine."
The first blind pianist in the Cliburn competition's 47-year history to advance beyond the preliminary round, Tsujii learns everything by ear, "but he displayed impressive and consistent command of major repertory," wrote Dallas Morning News music critic Scott Cantrell. "His big smiles when being led onto … the stage immediately endeared him to the audience, which cheered loudly and long."
Tsujii will give a recital Saturday at the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater. His program includes a pair of Chopin nocturnes, Schumann's Papillons, some Liszt (including a "concert paraphrase" of the Verdi opera Rigoletto) and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
Last week, I spoke with Tsujii through a translator, and he said that he has committed more than 100 classical works to memory. He learns by listening to recordings of the pieces.
"A very short piece, I can learn in one to three days," he said by phone from Charlotte, N.C. "For something longer — a Chopin sonata — it takes about a week."
In A Surprise in Texas, a documentary made about the Cliburn competition, held every four years in Fort Worth, much was made of Tsujii's rendition of Beethoven's challenging Hammerklavier sonata: a blind pianist playing music by a deaf composer.
"Beethoven wrote the greatest music without hearing it. It's the same as not seeing," Cliburn judge Menahem Pressler said.
But Tsujii tends to deflect such interpretations. "A blind pianist should just enjoy playing the piano and not think of oneself as being blind," he said.
John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs on Critics Circle at tampabay.com/blogs/critics.
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