However much delight Japanese piano virtuoso Nobuyuki Tsujii (known as Nobu) gives to his audience of dignitaries in the Great hall of Parliament House on Friday he won't be able to see that delight on their faces. Nobu, a delighter of audiences in many of the great auditoriums of the world, (including the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall), has been blind since birth.
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Used to the on-stage companionship of the very grandest of grand pianos, on Thursday he obliged The Canberra Times by posing with (but declining to play) the Hyatt Hotel's stubby little Yamaha baby grand.
This is his first tour of Australia. In coming days he will be going on to the Sydney Opera House to play Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. But first on Friday in the Great Hall the 27-year-old will be giving a recital attended by prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and the Japanese Ambassador Sumio Kusaka.
The recital is to mark 40 years of friendship between Australia and Japan, the 40th anniversaries of the Basic Treaty between Japan and Australia and the establishment of the Australia Japan Foundation.
Although he would be a dazzling performer even without his handicap his admirers, in their gushing reviews, marvel at how dashingly he is able to learn and play some fiendishly difficult scores necessarily by ear, without assistance of printed music.
On Thursday and through an interpreter, he explained that only a fraction of the world's treasure trove of music is available in braille form And so with teachers and friends he has come up with a unique-to-him system in which a team of pianists records pieces, in small sections. He thinks of these recordings as 'music sheets for ears' and he uses them, painstakingly, to learn pieces by ear, albeit never simply just imitating what he has heard.
Soloists performing with orchestras usually make crucial eye contacts with the conductor so as to be able to synchronise things. He can't do that but instead he explained on Thursday as well as using "sense" (there can be semi-mystical empathy between conductor and soloist) he may arrange for contact with conductors "by breaths", with little gasps.
On Thursday this reporter's unspoken prayers that the famous man would, after all, give us a short recital on the inferior baby piano remained unanswered. Appreciative people who have heard him play and who try to describe it rationally (and a famous wit has said that talking/writing about music is as superfluous as dancing about architecture) can sound as if they are describing a religious experience.
Authoritative Wikipedia reports eminent pianist and piano competition juror Menahem Pressler saying of Nobu "God has taken his eyes, but given him the ... mental endowment to encompass the greatest works of piano. For him to play the Chopin concerto with such sweetness, gentleness and sincerity - it's deeply touching. I had to keep from crying when I left the room."
Our famously emotional and sometimes publicly teary prime minister must remember to take his tissues to Friday's recital.
