Despite being a pianist myself, and having (struggled) through the Chopin First Concerto, nothing prepared me for the unbelievable feat that Nobuyuki Tsujii pulled off right before my eyes tonight at the Royal Festival Hall.
The evening began with the Philharmonia Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, which under Principal Conductor Santtu Matias-Rouvali’s baton had a slight tongue-in-cheek humour but a little on the tame side without much sentimentalism. To be honest, everyone seemed to be waiting for the arrival of the piano.
Nobuyuki Tsujii strode in amidst cheers from the audience, holding on to Santtu’s arm. He made his bows in the practised direction and sat down. When he wasn’t playing during the tuttis, he would be swaying to the music, head shaking side to side. About a dozen measures before his entry he would place his hand in front of him and begin feeling the keyboard. He seemed first to go to the furthermost points of the keyboard to which the music would take his left and right hands before moving closer to the centre, then gradually resting on his starting position. It was fascinating to observe.
The clarity of Nobuyuki’s notes were astounding. Every single note was voiced clearly. In the first two movements of the Chopin Concerto, Nobuyuki sought expressiveness not in his rubato or flexibility, but in the perfect clarity of his touch. At times it did make the music feel a little too straightforward and unsentimental, yet there was something dignified about this sound that made it unique.
However, when the third movement arrived, Nobuyuki shocked us all with his electrifying virtuosity. In contrast to the first and second movements, for which he picked tempi verging on the slow side, emphasizing depth of sound rather than finesse, the finale was all about showing off his spectacular fingerwork. Despite the speed, his notes were still remarkably clear. It was hard for me fathom how someone’s fingers could simply fly up and down the keyboard like that as if it was made of air, not to mention the fact that he could not see the keyboard! There was a sense of fearlessness in his playing, intangible and yet felt by all in the hall, that drew us all to the edge of our seats in the finale and then out of them for standing ovations as he rolled up the final E major scale triumphantly.
As a pianist, there was something remarkable about Nobuyuki’s approach to the keyboard that I must note here. Of course, the keyboard is tactile instrument, but to rely entirely on touch when playing the piano requires different skills. Nobuyuki keeps his hands extremely close to the keyboard, sliding his fingers rather than jumping from one position to another. By knowing the keys purely through touch, he was able to make jumps faster than the average pianist. By keeping his hands extremely close to the keyboard and eliminating unnecessary movement, he was able to play extremely fast passages. I read online afterwards that he learned music through listening to tapes specially recorded for him by a team of pianists, perfecting passages bit by bit. A painstaking process requiring more time, patience and effort, no doubt, but the result was a very solid sound with remarkably detailed attention to its sonority. It was awe-inspiring to see someone turn such a major disadvantage up on its head to produce a very unique pianism.
To appease the standing crowd, Nobuyuki performed an encore–Liszt’s La Campanella! Famed for its jumps be it as semiquavers or octaves, Nobuyuki seemed to shrug off all his demons and proceeded to play this fantastically difficult etude at breakneck speed. It sent the audience into an uproar, and quite rightly so, for this was not something one saw every day.
While not as much of a spectacle, the Philharmonia Orchestra gave a wonderful performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. What made him look tame and unsentimental in Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien became Santtu’s strength’s in dealing with the complex and contrapuntal music of Bartók. He seemed to know the score inside out, navigating the fugato in the final movement with ease and great vigour. His tongue-in-cheek humour also worked exceedingly well in the fourth movement, in which Bartók openly mocks Shostakovich by caricaturing his music. I’ve always enjoyed Santtu’s rhythmically precise and very structural direction coupled with great energy, and this piece showed him at his best, of course giving credit also to the amazing players of the Philharmonia Orchestra (not an easy piece to play!).
In a rare occurrence of an orchestral encore (perhaps because they had all just been “soloists” in a Concerto for Orchestra), the Philharmonia performed Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 1, sending us all on our way home with Hungarian earworms.
Literally Left-handed 
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