Nobuyuki Tsujii Presents His DG Debut
Nobu scales the heights of the “Hammerklavier” –
one of the most dramatic and demanding sonatas in the repertoire
He complements this monumental work with
the lyricism of Liszt’s transcription of An die ferne Geliebte
“I’m happy and honoured to have joined Deutsche Grammophon, home to so many legendary artists, and I’m thrilled to be releasing my first album, with two wonderful works by Beethoven”
Nobuyuki Tsujii
Having signed for Deutsche Grammophon in April this year, pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, universally known as Nobu, has now recorded his debut album for the Yellow Label. He is launching his DG career in style with a Beethoven programme that pairs the towering “Hammerklavier” Sonata, op. 106 – one of the works he performed on the way to being named joint winner of the Van Cliburn Competition in 2009 – with Liszt’s transcription of the yearning song cycle An die ferne Geliebte (“To the Distant Beloved”).
The album is set for release digitally worldwide – and on CD in Japan – on 29 November 2024. Excerpts from An die ferne Geliebte will be issued for streaming/download on 25 October and 15 November, while the CD will be released worldwide on 21 March 2025.
Of all Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, No. 29 in B flat major, op. 106, is perhaps the most technically, intellectually and – given its sheer scale – physically demanding on the performer. Written over the space of a year (1817–18), this radically unconventional work emerged from a period of personal distress and artistic stagnation in the composer’s life, but its completion ushered in a new phase of enormous creativity.
The “Hammerklavier”, so called because Beethoven was keen to use a German word for the piano, explores the instrument’s full potential. While composing the sonata, the composer received a Broadwood piano from London which had a lower range than the Viennese pianos of the day. He incorporated these additional notes into the “Hammerklavier”, which also uses virtually every key signature possible. So impenetrable did the score seem to many of Beethoven’s contemporaries that it took an artist of the stature of Franz Liszt to give what is thought to have been its public premiere, in Paris in 1836, almost a decade after the composer’s death (Berlioz’s review hailed Liszt’s “ideal performance of a work said to be unperformable”).
Like all before him, Nobu, who learns every score by heart on account of his blindness, had to deal with the daunting nature of the “Hammerklavier”. “It’s such a long work that it’s very difficult to maintain your concentration,” he explains. “I spent a lot of time preparing for the recording, and especially struggled with the third movement, as well as with making the music my own, but the more you play it, the more deeply you feel it. There are aspects of Beethoven’s experience that overlap with my own – he lost his hearing but still wrote wonderful, and very difficult, pieces like this sonata. So I worked on it with great respect.”
Nobu’s respectful and positive approach regularly wins over audiences who see him perform live, and it paid off in the recording studio too. Towards the end of his second day there, he ran through the long, complex third movement of the “Hammerklavier” in preparation for the actual recording the next morning. At the recording producer’s request, he played it again, a little faster. The next morning, he began the session in a state of extraordinary concentration. The production team were so impressed by the precision, eloquence and depth of feeling of his first run-through that, with just a few small cuts, this is the version which appears on the album.
The Liszt connection continues in the second work presented here: the former’s arrangement for solo piano of the 1816 song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. In preparing for the recording, Nobu explored the texts of the six songs as well as the music. “I was moved by the lyrics,” he says, “and thought this expressive cycle could complement the ‘Hammerklavier’ well.”
An die ferne Geliebte is recognised as the first Lieder cycle, its circular nature underlined by the use of the same key (E flat major) for the first and last songs, and melodic echoes of the opening at the conclusion. Far from adding moments of virtuosic display, Liszt’s version has all the simplicity and sense of longing of the original, as reflected in Nobu’s thoughtful interpretation for this album.
“Nobu brought the same intense focus and optimistic mindset to the studio as he always does to the concert platform,” concludes Dr Clemens Trautmann, President Deutsche Grammophon. “His determination to do justice to the contrasting challenges of these two works impressed the whole team, and we’re thrilled to be able to share his vision of Beethoven with listeners around the world.”
