Chopin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3 Nobuyuki Tsujii

• Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849): Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35:
• 1 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: I. Grave – Doppio movimento (Live) 07:41
• 2 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: II. Scherzo – Più lento (Live) 06:58
• 3 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: III. Marche funèbre. Lento (Live) 08:19
• 4 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35: IV. Finale. Presto (Live) 01:35
• Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58:
• 5 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58: I. Allegro maestoso 09:24
• 6 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58: II. Scherzo. Molto vivace 02:57
• 7 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58: III. Largo 08:46
• 8 Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58: IV. Finale. Presto non tanto 05:20
• Total Runtime 51:00

Info for Chopin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3

Frederic Chopin’s Piano Sonatas no.2 (“Funeral March”) and no.3 are the product of the composer’s maturity and boundless invention.

The genre title ‘nocturne’ was fairly commonplace in early nineteenth-century piano music, influenced no doubt by the enhanced cultural status of the night (famous texts by Novalis and Madame de Staël), and also by the growing importance of the salon as a site of pianism. Initially it was applied to a wide diversity of pieces, but in the hands of John Field and Chopin it came to be associated with a pianistic style shaped by vocal imitation, whether of the French romance or the Italian aria. By the time Chopin came to compose his Nocturnes Op 27 in 1835, the genre was already a well-established one, with the archetype of the ‘nocturne sound’—ornamental melody supported by widespread arppeggiations—firmly in place. The Nocturnes of Op 27 are broadly conformant, but they did mark an intriguing change in how Chopin presented this genre to the world. From this point onwards, he published his Nocturnes in contrasted pairs rather than in groups of three, giving greater weight to the individual pieces within an opus but at the same time preserving a sense of their mutual compatibility. Chopin was happy to perform the individual Nocturnes of Op 27 separately (especially the second, which he played in Paris, England and Scotland), but he conceived them as perfectly complementary, with the darkly brooding C sharp minor of the first (James Huneker referred to ‘the gloomiest and grandest of Chopin’s moody canvasses’) transformed enharmonically into the consolatory, oneiric D flat major of the second. That these were pieces of exceptional artistic quality was immediately recognized when they were published in 1836, not least by Schumann in the pages of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, where he described them as exemplifying a ‘new wave’ of piano music.

Nobuyuki Tsujii, piano

Nobuyuki Tsujii
The intense energy generated by Nobuyuki Tsujii in performance is electrifying. The Japanese pianist, universally known as Nobu, channels his phenomenal technical skills and command of tonal colours to craft interpretations that reveal the essence of the works in his wide repertoire. Stemming from a profound spiritual connection with the music and a rare ability to be as one with his instrument, his artistry appears all the more remarkable given that he was born blind.

Nobu created headline news in 2009 when he was declared joint winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition’s coveted Gold Medal. His pianism prompted the contest’s founder to declare that he was “absolutely miraculous”. Nobu’s performance, he continued, had “the power of a healing service. It was truly divine.”

That verdict was soon endorsed by audiences and critics drawn to hear the young man’s debuts on the world’s most prestigious stages, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and the main auditorium of Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. Nobu also became the subject of a documentary directed by the eminent film-maker Peter Rosen: Touching the Sound: The Improbable Journey of Nobuyuki Tsujii (2014), having already featured prominently in the director’s film about the 13th Van Cliburn Competition, A Surprise in Texas (2010).

Having long since established his place among today’s leading pianists, Nobu signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in April 2024. The label plans to reissue the artist’s existing classical discography, and subscribers to its STAGE+ platform can now watch two recitals filmed earlier this year – one from Suntory Hall, the other from the Verbier Festival – as well as Rosen’s Touching the Sound.

Nobu’s debut DG album features a Beethoven programme that pairs the towering “Hammerklavier” Sonata, op. 106 with Liszt’s transcription of the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte (“To the Distant Beloved”). The album is set for release digitally – and on CD in Japan – on 29 November 2024, while the CD will be released worldwide on 21 March 2025.

In recent seasons Nobu has appeared as concerto soloist with, among others, Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic, and Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Other career highlights include performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the BBC Philharmonic and Juanjo Mena, and the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg and Kent Nagano.

Forthcoming highlights include a tour of Australia during which he will perform Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto and a recital programme of Beethoven, Liszt, Ravel and Kapustin (18 October−9 November); three performances in Honolulu, Hawaii (14, 16 & 17 November); and a recital tour of Japan featuring solo works by Debussy, Prokofiev and Beethoven (1–20 December). He begins 2025 with performances of the Grieg Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in Fukuoka, Tokyo, Yokohama, Kawasaki, Osaka and Nagoya (19–26 January).

Born in Tokyo in September 1988, Nobu displayed his innate musicality at the age of two when he began picking out tunes on a tiny toy piano. After just a few hearings he was able to play the songs his mother sang to him, and he began improvising miniature compositions spontaneously during early childhood. “The piano is something I can use to express myself, and I’m much better at communicating using piano rather than speech,” he reflects. “So in that sense, the piano is essential for me.”

Nobu’s phenomenal aural skills and memory enabled him to learn increasingly complex pieces by listening to short sections and repeating them at the piano his parents bought for him. His progress was such that he won first prize at the All Japan Music Competition of Blind Students at the age of seven and, three years later, made his debut with orchestra. He gave his first piano recital, in the small hall of Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, when he was twelve and soon reached audiences overseas with recital tours to the United States, Russia and France. He also began performing his own compositions.

Two years after reaching the semifinal of the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2005, Nobu enrolled at Tokyo’s Ueno Gakuen University and made his professional debut. He achieved pop-star status in Japan thanks to his Cliburn Competition victory and remains enormously popular in his homeland, as well as having a huge and ever-growing fanbase abroad. “I always aim to play for audiences to enjoy,” he says. “To me, my responsibility is the audience’s enjoyment.”

This album contains no booklet.