By Patricia H. Kushlis
The Santa Fe Symphony’s opening concert for the 2009-10 Season
last Sunday featured
Van Cliburn Competition winner Nobuyuki Tsujii performing
Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor. The twenty one year old blind
Japanese pianist is already a sensation in
Japan. He burst onto the American scene
at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition in
Ft.
Worth, Texas where this
crowd pleaser shared the gold medal with 19 year old Chinese pianist Haochen
Zhang.
Tsujii is amazing – not just for overcoming his tremendous visual
handicap – but for his wonderfully lyrical interpretation of Chopin, a welcome
respite from the hard bitten pyrotechnics of far too many young celebrity pianists
today.
His performance in Santa Fe
was filmed by Japanese television for inclusion in a documentary being made about
Tsujii for broadcast in Japan. How much of the footage from Santa Fe’s Lensic Theater will
make the final cut, of course, is another question but if filming a full house,
multiple curtain calls, standing ovations, an excellent orchestra, an
attractive and unique venue and an encore are indications of audience approval
then at least a clip should appear.
Tsujii’s win makes him the first Japanese ever to have won
the 47 year old Van Cliburn Competition.
No wonder, then, that Japanese television decided to make the
documentary.
This year’s competition also heralds the first time that
Asians have come to dominate the competition’s winners circle:
four out of the six current prize winners are
from
Asia – two Chinese, one Korean and Tsujii.
The other two were Europeans.
None were Russians or Americans.
In the beginning. . .
In 1962 the Van Cliburn Competition began with strong Cold
War overtones but as time went on the competition transcended the mushroom
cloud rivalry between the two nuclear superpowers.
Van Cliburn, for which the competition is named, had risen
from seemingly nowhere to international stardom almost overnight. He was met with a hero’s welcome complete
with New York ticker-tape parade after he won
the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow
at the Cold War’s heights and just a year before the famous “Kitchen Debate”
between Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard
Nixon.
Yes, this privately sponsored competition was used for
political purposes by both the US
and the Soviet Union – and over the years
Soviet and then Russian pianists did exceedingly well in the virtuosic duel of
the 88 keys. But in the years since the
Cold War ended, the name of the game has changed.
That’s all for the good.
For the past several years, terrifically talented young
Chinese musicians have flooded the western music world and not just
pianists. Research has shown that a far
higher percentage of Chinese have perfect pitch than those of us who do not
speak a tonal language so once China overcame the ravages and stultification of
the Cultural Revolution and embraced the West and pieces of its culture their
ability to perform classical music at the highest levels should have come as no
surprise.
Neither Japanese nor Korean are tonal languages, but
Japanese and Korean musicians have also become major factors on the classical stage
as pianists but especially in the string sections of symphonies.
Perhaps, then, the North Koreans invitation to
the New York Philharmonic to perform in Pyongyang last year is simply an East
Asian extension of this reverence and interest in the Western classical
tradition as well as the use of the universal language of music by the Hermit
Kingdom in a tentative westward opening.
Opening hearts, minds, ears and eyes
Years ago Van Cliburn helped open the hearts, minds, ears and eyes of
the Soviets soon after Stalin’s death just as his Soviet counterparts made the
Soviet behemoth less threatening to Americans. Maybe sometime in the future we’ll see a North
Korean among this competition’s finalists as well.
Meanwhile I hope the Japanese public as well as those of us
who heard Tsujii perform in Santa Fe on September 20 will have a chance to
enjoy the music of a 19th century Pole who spent much of his short
life in France performed by a young Japanese pianist playing with a New Mexico
orchestra in the capital city of one of America’s most ethnically diverse
states.