sifinimusic Aug 7 2012 interview

This August 7, 2012 article about Nobuyuki Tsujii appeared on an English classical music website, sinfinimusic. Although I look forward to a day when Nobu will no longer be labeled as "blind pianist", the article does focus on how Nobu overcame his blindness, and hence the title. You must read the comments by Nobu's manager and travel escort Mr. Nick Asano!! The text is copied below for preservation.

http://blog.sinfinimusic.com/secrets-of-a-blind-pianist/

Secrets of a blind pianist

Nobuyuki Tsujii (23) was joint gold medal winner of the 2009 Van Cliburn Piano Competition, a major achievement for any young pianist - except that Nobu has been blind since birth. We were amazed when we saw his trailer so watch it below, from the new video of his recent Carnegie Hall recital featuring his composition dedicated to the victims and survivors of the Japan earthquake.

Then read our remarkable interview with Nobu, where he shares the unique methods used when learning complex pieces.

Sinfini: Winning the Van Cliburn competition, performing at Carnegie Hall – it sounds like you’ve achieved more than most people in a lifetime.

Nobuyuki Tsujii: I understand winning first prize at a competition is not a goal for a professional musician, but just the beginning of a career. I need to enlarge my repertoire, to enrich and to deepen my approach to music. That said, the Van Cliburn has given me an ideal start; it has opened a window to the world. It has been my dream since I was a small child to travel abroad and to play music to audiences all over the world.

So, currently, life is a dream come true and I wish to be a musician who is invited to play for many years.

Sinfini: You learn by ear. Please explain how it is possible to unravel the complex harmonies and textures in a late Beethoven sonata, for example. How long would it take you to learn such a piece by ear?

NT: I once tried to learn music by braille, but it took me a very long time to “read” braille and I believe highly advanced music such as Prokofiev or Rachmaninov concertos were not available on it. So, I sometimes played short pieces based on my memory.

Then, one of my former teachers invented and developed a unique method for me. He found I had absolute pitch and very precise memory, and I was able to recognize very complex harmonies. He first split the music into left hand and right hand, and split each hand into smaller sections. Then he recorded it on cassette tape, as precisely as possible. He recorded it with verbal comments about the composer’s marking. When my assistant records the tape for me, I ask him or her to play without interpretation, to allow me to add my own vision through practice. If I can concentrate on a particular work, for example Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, as I did for the Van Cliburn Competition, it can take one month to learn. Contemporary music is sometimes not so easy to memorize!

Sinfini: It has been said that losing one sense, sharpens the remaining ones. Do you listen more closely without the distraction of sight? How does this heightened awareness of sound influence your playing?

NT: They say it may happen but I’m not sure. I just found myself good at playing piano and enjoyed it very much. My mother told me the following story. My mother played a CD of Chopin piano music to me when I was eight months old. She saw I really liked Chopin’s Heroic Polonaise. One day, she bought another CD with the same piece played by a different pianist, and found I had a clear and consistent like/dislike between these two pianists.

She thought, ‘this baby likes music’ (she didn’t think this baby was talented at that moment), and bought a small toy piano for me when I was two years old. There are some videotapes at home of my mother singing pop tunes to me while I play the tune with one hand and improvise with the other.

My mother took me outdoors, such as to the fields and to climb hills, to swim and to ski. I still love outdoor activities and listening to bird songs and the murmur of the rivers. It is very refreshing.

My mother also took me to exhibitions and to firework displays. She described the shapes and colors. I thought everything had its own colour, so one day I asked her “what is the colour of today’s breeze?” It’s funny; I feel I owe a significant part of my sense about light and shadow to such education.

(Nick Asano, Tsuji’s agent, adds: I’ve observed that Nobu has a tremendous sense of space, distance and direction. Once I took him to a concert hall in Dortmund, Germany. I opened the stage door to let Nobu in and immediately he stopped and said “Alas, it’s so small!”. It was a so-called multi-purpose hall with 200 seats. Nobu never clapped hands or made a sound. He never asked if it was small but just said he was disappointed to “see” his debut in Germany was scheduled at such a small venue.

One day we were walking on the street of Nagoya, Japan’s third largest city. Nobu suddenly told me at a corner, “Nick, I think we turned to right here, in the morning.’ I looked around, and saw he was correct. I asked why he knew it; if he was counting steps. He seemed embarrassed. After some seconds, he said, “Well, Nick, I have not thought about it, but please tell me, why you missed the corner.”

Gifted people can easily achieve something unbelievable, but they can’t explain why they can do what others can’t. Blind since birth, it seems to me that Nobu has not been interested in thinking that he is blind and other people are not. He says he never feels handicapped. When he says “there is no barrier in music”, it means he feels neither handicapped nor benefited by blindness.)

Sinfini: You compose and have written a piece, Elegy for the Victims of the Earthquake and Tsunami. Please describe the piece and how you composed it, and tell me your reasons for composing it.

NT: As you know, in March last year Japan was seriously damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, followed by the nuclear crisis. On 11 March I was touring Japan with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra from Manchester and the tour was terminated half way. What I observed during the following week was very painful.

Then I flew to the US for a five-week tour. There, I met and understood the whole world was rushing to support the people in Japan. The US Red Cross, US-Japan Association, Students Association and Chinese Cultural Foundation were collecting donations. I decided to dedicate my recitals to these people. I wanted to play a short piece for an encore, to express my most sincere sympathy to the victims and their families, to encourage them, and to express gratitude to those who gave their thoughts and their help. So, it just came out naturally, like an improvisation.

Interview by Sinfini Editor John Evans.

Nobuyuki Live Carnegie Hall is out on DVD