Nobuyuki Tsujii

Nobuyuki Tsujii is a Japanese pianist, blind from birth, who shared first prize at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He has built an international career as a concerto soloist and recitalist, admired for his physical command of the instrument and his ability to project a wide range of orchestral color from the keyboard. Listeners can expect a big-boned, romantic style of playing paired with real structural clarity.

Tsujii is known above all for large-scale romantic concertos, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, where his playing combines a big, singing tone with real physical power at climaxes. He tends to favor broad, spacious tempos in slow movements, letting melodies breathe and swell, while his fast passagework is precise and driven rather than rushed. He also composes and has premiered his own concert works alongside the standard repertoire. Because he learns scores by ear rather than by sight, his performances often carry a strong sense of the music having been absorbed as a whole, phrase logic and long-range shape feeling unusually integrated. Audiences coming to hear him with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless ensemble, can expect a soloist who listens closely and shapes phrases in close dialogue with the players around him rather than following a single baton.

Nobuyuki Tsujii was born blind in Japan and began playing piano as a young child, reportedly picking out tunes by ear before receiving formal instruction. He studied piano in Japan and later at institutions in the United States, developing a method of learning new works by having them played to him repeatedly and by braille music scores. In 2009 he shared first prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, an achievement that brought him wide international attention and launched a busy performing career across Japan, the United States, and Europe. Since then he has appeared as soloist with major orchestras and given solo recitals worldwide, and he has also composed original works, including music used in film and concert settings.