Sapporo Theater Journal review

The following article was posted on March 21 2021 by the Sapporo Theatre Journal
(in Japanese) http://www.sapporo-thj.com/1955/

辻井伸行 日本ツアー２０２１≪ロマン派≫レビュー（3月2日 ＠札幌文化芸術劇場hitaru）執筆：多田 圭介

The English translation below is compiled by me with help from Google Translate. The translation does not do justice to the artistic writing of the original article, which is way beyond my level of translation.  Please take it as a hint of what was written.  

It is not often that I come across a review of Nobu's concert from Japan, so I wanted to preserve it here.

March 2, 2021 (Tuesday) Sapporo Cultural Arts Theater hitaru

[On this day] I listened to Nobuyuki Tsujii's 2021 Japan tour "Romanticism"performance in Sapporo.The tour started in Tokorozawa on January 31 and has just concluded in Kanazawa performances a few days ago. When I listened to Tsujii performthe19th century "Romantic" works of Schumann and Liszt, I felt that the idiosyncrasy of the musician Tsujii was once again highlighted.

Tsujii is a mysterious pianist for the author. Sometimes I think that he spins the sound so casually that it comes across as rather sloppy, but at the next moment I would get a glimpse of the abyss, as if he was another person. Every time I listen to him, it sounds different from the music we are used to listening. The term "modern" here can be said to be an aesthetic sense that prepares the outer surface.To begin with, a shape is made. Tsujii's consciousness does not seem to be heading that way from the start. He has a lot of techniques but isn't interested in burnishing the exterior. To the sense of modern people, his playing sometimes seems to be casual. However, as I listened to it, I didn't care about the casualness, and the sound entered my body without mediation, and eventually my heart was shaken. That's always the case.

The author once described Tsujii as a "living-in-the-body musician" This time too, that feeling was strengthened. Let's expand on it a little. The 19th century Romantic era was a time when human beings were socialized as extremely personal beings.People alienated the body at the expense of the autonomy and independence of the individual. Romantic art was the cry of anxiety and despair emanating from the alienated physical self.  At its core, it is the pursuit of oneself. Today we live in a fiction that comes at the end of this chain of self-denial. Everyone is a citizen who is rational, public, and has the right to vote. Let's say that such a fiction exists. That way, society will turn out well. It was in the modern 19th century that this fiction alienated the living body . However, Tsujii's music restores the body to its natural form, before the world was divided by consciousness.  And what happens when Tsujii, who lives in a body without the alienation, plays such a program focusing on the 19th century Romanticism? I was intrigued. That's why I wrote this article that highlights the idiosyncrasy of a musician named Tsujii.

*****

"Papillon" and "Kinderszenen" were selected from Schumann in the first half of the program. Of these, I listened to "Kinderszenen" with great interest. "Kinderszenen" is different from the so-called Jugend album composed for children. It has a complex taste that describes the feelings of a day of a child, from an adult's perspective. In the interpretation of Tsujii that I heard, it goes back and forth between the joyful music of the body that plays with nature and the sadness that is lost in the distant memory.

When repeating the main part at the beginning of the firstpiece "About strange countries and people" in Kinderszenen, Tsujii turned to the weakest sound and entered the world of distant memory. From there, the world of innocent children.  In "Tags",  you can feel the expression of tension as  the relatives gather; and when the tension is relaxed with the conclusion of the last chord, you can feel the gentle gaze of an adult staring at the child. "One important thing" and "frightening" are only about childhood, and do not elicit beyond smiles. Childhood, repetitive but fun days when nothing happens. Enjoy it with your whole body. The air changed with the final piece, "The Poet Talks." In the happy days until then, I was struck by the empty air, as if I were no longer there.  Tsujii's music slowed down as if he had given up. The tempo instructed by Schumann was ♩ = 112, but Tsujii's might have been around ♩ = 70.  It reflects the resignation that we can never return [to our childhood]. However, there is also a pure admiration in it. It's like the days when nothing happens, like the days when you play with your friends in the park -- but in reality, it's only possible in fantasy, and in fact, it's the most meaningful thing in itself. It's the most beautiful and rich thing to aim for. Such a longing feeling echoes. Pianist Afanassiev said of the final piece, "everything so beautiful was empty." However, from Tsujii, I quietly heard the heart of admiration from the "empty" resignation.

***

The second half is 3 works by Liszt. Rigoletto-Paraphrase, Love Dream, Mephisto Waltz. In the latter half of the Liszt portion, Tsujii's essence did not come to life because the works themselves emphasized the external effect. However, it came through as I listened to the Rigoletto paraphrase. Here I am not obsessed with Magdalena's expression on Marquis Mantua, but I just enjoyed it as an arabesque with four tones. Tsujii, who realized the mature human gaze in the scene of a child, is returning to the innocent Tsujii.  I was really enchanted.

While listening to Tsujii's music, I remembered the words of a martial artist. "If I get injured, I won't be able to practice, so I won't enter a match." The word harbors the essence of modern alienation. The difference between modern competitive sports and lifestyle sports. Since modern times, the center of sports has changed to competitive sports, but the words that "you won't compete because you can't practice if you get injured" has the aversion to physical alienation in competitive sports. The martial artist also states that many athletes in competitive sports cannot keenly see or smell their own ego. The person may appear incapacitated when he expresses himself through the competition and asserts himself. Of course, there will be exceptional players among them. This is the same for performing arts. No matter how sophisticated the person may be, he is inherently incapacitated when he needs to sing and dance for self-confirmation. This is because they are being forced to cut through the world at the physical level to which they are originally connected.  When I come into contact with a performer who only smells of ego, I often dislike it, no matter how good the technique is.The program of Nobuyuki Tsujii's Japan Tour 2021 is a program focused on Romantic works born from such human incapacitation. It seems that this has made the essence of the musician Tsujii manifest many times. This made me think about what beauty is and what kind of phenomenon is emotion. I certainly experienced that rare space.

(多田 圭介 Keisuke Tada)

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Editorial: I especially appreciate that in the last paragraph, the author, Mr. Keisuke Tada, mentions the ego-less performance of Nobuyuki Tsujii.  Indeed that is -- to me -- what sets Nobu apart from many other virtuosos.  He is not on stage to show off, or to aggrandize himself, but to make "as many people as possible, happy." (Nobu quote cited by another Japanese music writer Takuo Ikeda ,  in a March 19 2021 tweet)