Backstory 3: News clippings of Nobuyuki Tsujii at the 2009 Cliburn Competition

REVIEW | CLIBURN AUDITIONS
... Sunday's best: "During Sunday's matinee session, Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20, from Japan wowed the crowd with fantastic fingerwork during his braruva reading of the 12 Etudes, Op. 10 by Chopin. Tsujii is blind ...

In a Fort Worth auditorium, 20-year-old Tokyo native Nobuyuki Tsujii is led by an assistant to the piano bench and sits. Head bobbing slightly, his fingers lightly, silently, skim the keyboard, just to get his bearings. When ready, he plays.

The audience gathered at the audition for this spring's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition heard Tsujii play Chopin’s 12 Etudes Opus 10. Many of the dozen pieces in this demanding, landmark composition are encore dazzlers. Through interpreter Keiko Couch, Tsujii says these Etudes are tough to play.

TSUJII (through Couch): “If you notice he checks where he has to stop. He touches the end of the piano keys and he finds where to start.”

The Japanese pianist flew to Fort Worth between his own concert dates just to audition. He already knew a few of the Chopin pieces and learned the rest in three weeks. He couldn’t have learned them that fast with Braille.

TSUJII (through Couch): “In music school he completely went by ear. Because Braille was way too much trouble. Just trying to figure out all the pages. So he just hears it. & his teacher plays it. Then he puts his own interpretation of it.”

Hungarian pianist Tamas Erdi says he also learns by listening and memorizing.

ERDI: “Braille score is very difficult. It could take one year to learn piano concerto from Braille score. If I know well the piece, I hear different interpretations and figure it out in my imagination from the piece.”

Erdi, who is 29 and prefers wearing dark glasses, featured music by noted Hungarians, including a dance by Zoltan Kodaly.

Erdi and Tsujii both garnered standing ovations in Fort Worth. But nearly all the pianists sparkled. Many have released critically acclaimed recordings and regularly give concerts in their parts of the world. Cliburn Foundation President Richard Rodzinski says the Cliburn competition can make their careers international.

RODZINSKI: “What we’re looking for are young professionals ready to have that push, that door being open to them. Not beginners, not students.”

It’s the judge’s job to identify those players ready for the next big step. This time, they’re also listening to blind competitors. So how might they deal with a human inclination to judge them more favorably than the others, given of all they’ve already overcome? The Cliburn Foundation’s General Manager, Maria Guralnik, says that’s no concern.

GURALNIK: “The main issue for the jury is being able to identify young artists who will perform at the highest level and move audiences with their music. And if any of the young men and women we hear do that:… they will be advanced to the competition.”

Guralnik says that’s the judges won’t be influenced by anything else they see or don’t onstage.

Less than 25 minutes until one of the most anticipated preliminary round recitals in recent Cliburn history. Blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii brought the house down during his Fort Worth audition and will probably do the same tonight. Particularly impressive is his opening music, Chopin's 12 Etudes. Will he be up to the hype? We will soon know

For the preliminary round, Tsujii played Chopin’s twelve etudes (all twelve, successively), Debussy Images, Book I, and Liszt’s “La Campanella”, wowing the audience in the concert hall as well as those who watched the webcast. His performance of the twelve etudes prompted comments such as “I am aghast. This is a man who cannot see and he can dash off twelve of the most challenging pieces for piano, back to back to back. Puts all the rest of us to shame!” Many also found his La Campanella astonishing. Wrote one commenter on youTube: "Not only is he wonderfully accurate and totally gets Liszt, he plays this a(t) the break-neck speed that Cziffra did without breaking a sweat. I too wonder how on earth he ever learned such a complex and demanding piece, much less all the other pieces he played at the Cliburn."

Nobu Mania?
Critic Chris Shull [whose unfavorable review of Nobu's La Campanella is mentioned in the documentary "A Surprise in Texas"] was less enamored, obviously. But during Nobuyuki Tsujii's Chopin, I had the sensation that his two hands were producing something approaching the sound of full orchestra, such depth, richness and nuance. There was also a humility about him that made his playing all the more endearing.

After Nobu's performance, I watched Linda Yax leave Bass Hall with her hand over her heart, looking almost stricken.

"I'm overwhelmed," said Yax, who is visiting Fort Worth from Buffalo, N.Y. "I just can't believe it. He seems so young. For someone to play that way must require a special kind of talent."

Only minutes after Nobuyuki Tsujii's emotional performance in the lead-off program for the night session, Van Cliburn was spotted for the first time at his namesake event, just outside the East portal of Bass Hall, grabbing a quick smoke and deep in conversation with several friends. What he was talking about, as it turns out, was the singular performance by Tsujii, the contest's only blind performer and, now, clear audience favorite. "He was absolutely miraculous," Cliburn gushed. "His performance had the power of a healing service. It was truly divine." --

June 07, 2009
A peek into Tsujii's final 2 days at the Cliburn

Getting personal: Nobuyuki Tsujii, the blind Japanese competitor, was winding up his post-performance chat with reporters when documentary filmmaker Peter Rosen asked him a question he wasn’t quite prepared for: “Do you have a girlfriend?” Silence. Kay Nakamoto of Bedford, professional interpreter who has been volunteering at the Cliburn, whispered to the 20-year-old pianist that he didn’t have to reply if he didn’t want to. She looked imploringly toward Furuki Kaburaki, one of Tsujii’s managers, who remained speechless. The young competitor still did not answer. Again she whispered that he need not say anything.Finally, Tsujii said, “I have no girlfriend but a friend at my school.” What is her name?, Rosen asked. “Maria.”

Ambassador of music: A surprise visitor at the stage door was former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Tom Schieffer, who told the blind Japanese competitor Nobuyuki Tsujii, “I’m really pulling for you. “Americans have really taken you to their hearts. ”It’s not known how much Cliburn clout is carried by the former envoy and onetime partner of George W. Bush in the Texas Rangers ball club. But the Fort Worth-bred Schieffer gave Tsujii a prediction that “you will have an impact on music for decades to come.”

Cowtown souvenirs: Before the awards ceremony, Tsujii said his happiest moment was receiving a pair of cowboy boots – gifts to all the competitors from Justin Boots – at the Fort Worth Zoo party for participants, where he wore a cowboy hat given him by his host family, Carol and John Davidson of Fort Worth.

Worldwide attention: Tsujii had the largest entourage of any of the competitors, and it grew. Aside from his mother Itsuko, who was permitted to stay with the host family because of his disability, a teaching assistant flew in from Tokyo, as did two managers. Then his main teacher, Tokyo-based concert pianist Yukio Yokoyama, flew in for a 24-hour whirlwind visit for some last minute mentoring. Then came the pinstripe-suited chairman of 105-year-old Ueno Gakuin University, where Tsujii is in his junior year. This weekend, a Japanese TV crew arrived to shoot the final day for the TV Asahi network. TV Asahi did a documentary on Tsujii five years ago and the Cliburn footage will be used in a new, updated version program, said Naoyuki “Nick” Asano, part of the team. -- Barry Shlachter