nobu tsujii

I wondered why Benaroya Hall was more crowded than usual and why I had only managed to get a seat in a third-tier box when I bought tickets to this concert a month ago. Then when Nobuyukii Tsujii walked onstage on the conductor's arm, it all became clear. This was the Nobu Tsujii. For some unearthly reason I didn't make the connection when I bought the tickets, but when I saw him, I knew instantly who this was. There wasn't a single wrong note in his Rach 2. I wonder whether the emotional weight and sense of tension and release that I felt as a listener was not the greater because I knew Nobu Tsujii was completely blind, or whether his lack of sight did not imbue his music with certain objective qualities that made the aural experience much the richer. I listened with eyes closed, because I thought that was most fitting. And it was honestly the best Rach 2 I've heard – certainly live. Much better than Khatia Buniatishvili's circus acrobatics from some years ago or the sad farce that was the performance by the Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra that Nicky and I witnessed in grad school. Nobu Tsujii's performance (along with the Seattle Symphony) was exactly right. It hit all the right emotional chords. At the end, for his encore, he played the choral from Bach's Cantata BWV 147, a beautiful, dignified bookend to a truly artistic evening.