Nobuyuki was born on September 13, 1988 in Tokyo, Japan. He began taking
lessons at the age of 4. He was also born blind but with a gift in music as
well. Here’s a great quote that pretty much sums up the skill of Nobuyuki’s
performances at the Cliburn Competition:
It's almost beyond imagining that
he has learned scores as formidable as Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto and Beethoven's
Hammerklavier Sonata by ear…Through all three rounds, he played with unfailing
assurance, and his unforced, utterly natural Chopin E-minor Piano Concerto was
an oasis of loveliness…He brought delicate expressivity to Debussy's first book
of Images and admirable proportion to the first movement of Beethoven's
Appassionata, and he managed to make Liszt's La Campanella fun but not vulgar.
–Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News, June 2009
Now I’ve learned pieces on guitar that topped out at about 8
minutes, of varying difficulties, but to learn a Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff
by ear? That’s pretty spectacular! Rachmaninoff was pretty well known for
writing some of the most technically challenging pieces ever, and I read that
he could reach from C to G past the octave on his left hand (that stretch seems
superhuman to me).
Nobuyuki's performance of Franz Liszt’s “La Campanella” (the
third piece of the six ‘Grandes Etudes de Paganini’) is one of the best
interpretations I have yet heard.
Tsujii plays La Campanella