Page 182 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

notably the extended over-hand low D-flat, which some pianists shorten to the
D2 key (I suspect Tsujii would have done this – although just because I couldn’t
see it, it doesn’t mean he did). He had a wonderful way with this movement,
however, that made it sound both delicate and poetic and with a sensitivity to
dynamics that is sometimes not emphasised enough. If there is one thing often
forgotten about Rachmaninoff’s Third it is that it’s largely a Romantic concerto
– not just a virtuoso one.

The enormous first movement, too, had been full of careful balances and
nuances that I found missing in some recent performances – Yuja Wang, for
example, seems to find neither Russianness nor the Romantic in the Third;

indeed, it is hard to know what the ‘third way’ is in her recent performances.
Tsujii doesn’t make the keyboard bleed in the streams of heavy blood in
the Allegro non troppo in that all too Russian way; but the sound runs like liquid
around the notes with effortless ease, there is a graceful beauty to his playing
that comes from hands that are much less inclined to be covered in armour and
steel. His cadenza was not crushing; maybe it wasn’t powerful either compared
with some pianists (Freddy Kempf, for example) – but there was nothing opaque
about the playing, there was nowhere to hide, either, because the phrasing was
so clean – and it was delivered superbly. It has sometimes been suggested that
his sound is not large; I do not think this is true. Rather, he is more aware of
dynamics than most pianists and, I think, keeps his hands much closer to the
keyboard than many pianists do (or would) which can scale back the sound. But
it is effortlessly precise in sound and volume to meld with the orchestra to a
perfect degree. I didn’t struggle once to hear him.

The Finale had many wonderful things in it and was perhaps the best of the
three movements. For me, much of this movement works best if pianists get
close to what Rachmaninoff wrote – the further one moves away from the score,
the less contrast there exists in any performance. Tsujii’s strength here was his
entire focus on sound – not just on what came out of the instrument, but on what
the ear was telling him was in the score. I have rarely heard a pianist better play
the accented notes after the central cadenza – they were done with pin-point
accuracy, just nailed perfectly against the keyboard. Staccato notes that also
needed an accent were dutifully given them (Reh. 62, for example). The cadenza
before the coda was just superb – that molto marcato so incisive, precisely as it
should be done. The coda itself was kind of jaw dropping in a way – the chances

of pianists and orchestras falling out of sync here isn’t exactly slim – but it was
seamless.

I had found the entire performance gripping – in a concerto, which sometimes,
with some pianists, seems a long experience. Nobuyuki Tsujii is unquestionably