I enjoyed Nobuyuki Tsujii concert at Tokyo Art Theater in Ikebukuto. My daughter presented me the ticket. About 2000 seats were filled by middle age women. His concert is very popular and it’s normal to sell tickets by lottery. Programs for the concert were ‘two Arabesque’ and ‘Image 1st Collection’ of Debussy , ‘Sonatine’ of Ravel and ‘Scherzos’ of Chopin.
He played master piece music with his unique powerful and energetic style shaking head hard. The Handicap of total blind worked plus side for him to express his own unique world image. The reason that he is very popular among women and the reason that it’s very hard to get tickets come from this terrific atmosphere. Encore play was 3 songs including his song. This concert lasted almost 2 hours.
According to His mother, free announcer Itsuko Tsujii’s book, he was born as Microphthalmia. Several days after delivery, a doctor explained to her that he can not see anything thru his life. When half year passed after his birth, he expressed pleasure by swinging legs when she was listening Chopin’s Hero Polonaise. And he became bad mood when she changed the CD to other song because the CD has been worn out. He started to express pleasure by swinging legs again when she play new Chopin CD afterword.
When he was 2 years and 3 month old, his mother was humming Christmas song. He started to play toy piano using 10 fingers. Believing his talent, his Mother started him to learn to music teacher Masahiro Kawakami. The teacher trained him using recorded cassette tape. It took several hours to memorize 5 minute music. Musical scores by ear reached more than 200 tapes. This lesson has been called ‘fire lesson’.
June 2009, He won ‘Van Clyber International Piano Competition’ when he was 20 years old and he started his carrier as pianist. Actually he challenged ‘Chopin International Piano Competition’ when he was 17. However he couldn’t win this competition. Even thought he had good confidence. His dream didn’t come true this time. Victory of Van Clyber Piano Competition was based on his failure in young age. After this victory, He became world famous pianist playing at Carnegie Hall ,Vienna Best Friends Association Hall and other famous stages.
Even so, I am surprised that he is remembering that long song. I am not sure how many repertoire he has. It must be easily over 200 knowing scores by ear. Classic is several 10 minutes long not like popular music. Total music time length in his memory must be more than several 10 hours. He must have much more large capacitor of memory than usual human. At the same time, he is the piano player who opened his own gift after unusual hard effort.
(Yoshihiro Fujiwara Feb. 25th, 2019)
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