United States Numerous: Nobuyuki Tsujii (piano). Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Corridor, New York, 5.11.2025. (ES-S)
Liszt – An die ferne Geliebte, S.469 (after Beethoven’s Liederkreis)
Beethoven – Piano Sonata No.23 in F minor, Op.57, ‘Appassionata’
Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker Suite, Op.71a (arr. Mikhail Pletnev)
Prokofiev – Piano Sonata No.7 in B-flat main, Op.83
Encores:
Beethoven – Adagio sostenuto from Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp minor, Op.27, No.2, ‘Moonlight Sonata’
Nikolai Kapustin – Live performance Etude, Op.40, No.1, ‘Prelude’
Liszt – ‘La campanella’ in G-sharp minor from Grandes Études de Paganini, S.141, No.3
Stephen Foster – ‘Jeanie with the Gentle Brown Hair’ (arr. Nobuyuki Tsujii)
Returning to Stern Auditorium two years after his earlier recital, Nobuyuki Tsujii reaffirmed the poise and focus which have turn into hallmarks of his performances. This system traced a development from lyrical intimacy to rhythmic propulsion, providing not a sequence of showpieces however a examine in musical transformation. Throughout the night, Tsujii’s taking part in emphasised stability and structural readability, revealing how melody and momentum evolve throughout a century of piano writing from Beethoven to Prokofiev.
The recital opened with Liszt’s An die ferne Geliebte, a piano transcription on Beethoven’s tune cycle, Op.98, a piece that occupies a particular place amongst Liszt’s many reimaginings of different composers’ music, from songs to symphonies. Not like Liszt’s operatic paraphrases or symphonic transcriptions which increase their sources by means of brilliance and orchestral phantasm, this setting stays unusually self-effacing – an homage that amplifies intimacy moderately than grandeur. Tsujii captured that inward high quality with outstanding management of texture and clear voicing. Even in these few passages the place Liszt’s penchant for grandiloquence briefly surfaced, Tsujii’s contact favored fluidity over brilliance, revealing the music’s quiet, inside glow. The melody unfolded with an nearly vocal suppleness, its phrasing sustained extra by means of refined inflection than by means of overt rubato. But in locations, the folkloric inflections of Beethoven’s strains had been introduced ahead a contact too pregnantly, giving the music a barely declarative profile that jarred with its in any other case restrained character.
Composed greater than a decade earlier, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.23 belongs to the identical emotional world that Liszt’s An die ferne Geliebte transcription evokes retrospectively – one the place intimacy and turbulence coexist inside a single, steady arc. However, the sonata inhabits a much more radical expressive world. The place Beethoven’s tune cycle, for all its seamlessness, stays restrained in concord and have an effect on, the ‘Appassionata’ pushes the boundaries of kind, gesture and tonal drama. Tsujii allowed that distinction to floor, the refinement of the Liszt transcription giving strategy to the darker turbulence of Beethoven’s personal design.
The Sonata, so usually handled as a car for tempestuous or ‘passionate’ show, emerged right here as a examine in restraint and proportion. Tsujii approached it not as a battlefield of dynamics however as an unfolding construction, its drama generated by means of pacing and harmonic rigidity. The primary motion’s turbulence was formed with readability, every crescendo calibrated, the rhythmic drive agency but by no means aggressive. Within the Andante con moto, he drew the variations right into a single arc of calm deliberation, the melodic line sustained with unforced continuity. The Finale’s perpetual movement in-built regular increments, its momentum arising from the construction itself. For all of the thoughtfulness and technical management on show, the efficiency supplied little in the best way of latest perception. The ‘Appassionata’ unfolded with poise however with out the sense of discovery or daring hazard that will make this acquainted work sound newly alive.
The second a part of this quasi-symmetrical program, every half pairing a transcription and a sonata, introduced out the fireworks – interspersed with passages of delicately drawn, tensioned calm. One may solely be in awe of the velocity and precision with which Tsujii’s arms moved throughout the keyboard, all of the extra outstanding since he was born blind. Simply listening, nonetheless, may immediate doubts about whether or not his interpretations are as distinctive as his method is flawless.
If Liszt’s An die ferne Geliebte demonstrated how transcription can protect intimacy whereas increasing expression, Pletnev’s Nutcracker Suite posed the alternative problem – easy methods to distill orchestral opulence into the sonority of a single instrument. Acknowledging Pletnev’s intent to remodel, not simply to transcribe, Tsujii didn’t strategy the association as a car for virtuoso show, focusing as a substitute on contact and shade. The ‘March’ and ‘Waltz of the Sugar-Plum Fairy’ shimmered with precision and stability, their textures animated by internal rhythmic life moderately than floor glitter. Within the ‘Intermezzo’, he discovered moments of lyricism, and within the ‘Trepak’, the music’s drive remained disciplined, exuberant with out being merely percussive. Nonetheless, the efficiency remained emotionally impartial; it was extra about craft than character.
Prokofiev’s Sonata No.7 proved essentially the most totally realized efficiency of the night, bringing a change not solely in idiom however in temperament. Its rigorous structure and rhythmic drive suited Tsujii’s precision and self-discipline. The opening Allegro inquieto, tautly articulated and tightly paced, retained its sense of menace with out resorting to aggression. Beneath its torrents of angular rhythms, Tsujii emphasised continuity of line, permitting the dissonances to unsettle moderately than overwhelm. Within the Andante caloroso, nonetheless, the music’s consoling heat remained by some means elusive; Tsujii’s phrasing was measured, its restraint bordering on coolness, the left-hand tolls extra exact than evocative. The closing Precipitato was measured but propulsive, the feel was dense however by no means congested, its relentless toccata rhythm articulated cleanly, each accent positioned with function. If the studying lacked the abandon or defiance that some pianists deliver to this wartime sonata, it nonetheless conveyed conviction by means of precision – an interpretation much less incendiary than unyielding.
The collection of 4 encores opened with a superbly indifferent account of the Adagio sostenuto from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, adopted by Kapustin’s jazzy Live performance Etude, Op.40, No.1, ‘Prelude’; Liszt’s transcription of Paganini’s ‘La campanella’; and Tsujii’s personal association of Stephen Foster’s ‘Jeanie with the Gentle Brown Hair’. In miniature, these items echoed the alternation between introspection and managed volatility that marked all the recital.
Edward Sava-Segal
