United States Various: Nobuyuki Tsujii (piano). Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, 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 major, Op.83
Encores:
Beethoven – Adagio sostenuto from Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp minor, Op.27, No.2, ‘Moonlight Sonata’
Nikolai Kapustin – Concert 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 Light Brown Hair’ (arr. Nobuyuki Tsujii)
Returning to Stern Auditorium two years after his previous recital, Nobuyuki Tsujii reaffirmed the poise and focus that have become hallmarks of his performances. The program traced a progression from lyrical intimacy to rhythmic propulsion, offering not a sequence of showpieces but a study in musical transformation. Across the evening, Tsujii’s playing emphasized balance and structural clarity, revealing how melody and momentum evolve across 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 song cycle, Op.98, a work that occupies a distinctive place among Liszt’s many reimaginings of other composers’ music, from songs to symphonies. Unlike Liszt’s operatic paraphrases or symphonic transcriptions which expand their sources through brilliance and orchestral illusion, this setting remains unusually self-effacing – an homage that amplifies intimacy rather than grandeur. Tsujii captured that inward quality with remarkable control of texture and transparent voicing. Even in those few passages where Liszt’s penchant for grandiloquence briefly surfaced, Tsujii’s touch favored fluidity over brilliance, revealing the music’s quiet, interior glow. The melody unfolded with an almost vocal suppleness, its phrasing sustained more through subtle inflection than through overt rubato. Yet in places, the folkloric inflections of Beethoven’s lines were brought forward a touch too pregnantly, giving the music a slightly declarative profile that jarred with its otherwise restrained character.
Composed more than a decade earlier, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.23 belongs to the same emotional world that Liszt’s An die ferne Geliebte transcription evokes retrospectively – one where intimacy and turbulence coexist within a single, continuous arc. Nevertheless, the sonata inhabits a far more radical expressive world. Where Beethoven’s song cycle, for all its seamlessness, remains restrained in harmony and affect, the ‘Appassionata’ pushes the limits of form, gesture and tonal drama. Tsujii allowed that contrast to surface, the refinement of the Liszt transcription giving way to the darker turbulence of Beethoven’s own design.
The Sonata, so often treated as a vehicle for tempestuous or ‘passionate’ display, emerged here as a study in restraint and proportion. Tsujii approached it not as a battlefield of dynamics but as an unfolding structure, its drama generated through pacing and harmonic tension. The first movement’s turbulence was shaped with clarity, each crescendo calibrated, the rhythmic drive firm yet never aggressive. In the Andante con moto, he drew the variations into a single arc of calm deliberation, the melodic line sustained with unforced continuity. The Finale’s perpetual motion built in steady increments, its momentum arising from the structure itself. For all the thoughtfulness and technical control on display, the performance offered little in the way of new insight. The ‘Appassionata’ unfolded with poise but without the sense of discovery or daring danger that would make this familiar work sound newly alive.
The second part of this quasi-symmetrical program, each half pairing a transcription and a sonata, brought out the fireworks – interspersed with passages of delicately drawn, tensioned calm. One could only be in awe of the speed and precision with which Tsujii’s hands moved across the keyboard, all the more remarkable since he was born blind. Just listening, however, might prompt doubts about whether his interpretations are as distinctive as his technique is flawless.
If Liszt’s An die ferne Geliebte demonstrated how transcription can preserve intimacy while expanding expression, Pletnev’s Nutcracker Suite posed the opposite challenge – how to distill orchestral opulence into the sonority of a single instrument. Acknowledging Pletnev’s intent to transform, not just to transcribe, Tsujii did not approach the arrangement as a vehicle for virtuoso display, focusing instead on touch and color. The ‘March’ and ‘Waltz of the Sugar-Plum Fairy’ shimmered with precision and balance, their textures animated by inner rhythmic life rather than surface glitter. In the ‘Intermezzo’, he found moments of lyricism, and in the ‘Trepak’, the music’s drive remained disciplined, exuberant without being merely percussive. Nonetheless, the performance remained emotionally neutral; it was more about craft than character.
Prokofiev’s Sonata No.7 proved the most fully realized performance of the evening, bringing a change not only in idiom but in temperament. Its rigorous architecture and rhythmic drive suited Tsujii’s precision and discipline. The opening Allegro inquieto, tautly articulated and tightly paced, retained its sense of menace without resorting to aggression. Beneath its torrents of angular rhythms, Tsujii emphasized continuity of line, allowing the dissonances to unsettle rather than overwhelm. In the Andante caloroso, however, the music’s consoling warmth remained somehow elusive; Tsujii’s phrasing was measured, its restraint bordering on coolness, the left-hand tolls more precise than evocative. The closing Precipitato was measured yet propulsive, the texture was dense but never congested, its relentless toccata rhythm articulated cleanly, every accent placed with purpose. If the reading lacked the abandon or defiance that some pianists bring to this wartime sonata, it nonetheless conveyed conviction through precision – an interpretation less incendiary than unyielding.
The series of four encores opened with a beautifully detached account of the Adagio sostenuto from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, followed by Kapustin’s jazzy Concert Etude, Op.40, No.1, ‘Prelude’; Liszt’s transcription of Paganini’s ‘La campanella’; and Tsujii’s own arrangement of Stephen Foster’s ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’. In miniature, these pieces echoed the alternation between introspection and controlled volatility that marked the entire recital.
Edward Sava-Segal