2024/03/12

A story unfolded with the resonance. It was a wonderful experience.
The charity concert at Hamarikyu Asahi Hall on March 10 was the first concert I had attended in a very long time.
When I was young, I attended only concerts by pianists who performed on the world stage.
When I was working part-time as a laborer in Tokyo, I spent very little money.
I went to Tokyo Bunka Kaikan in Ueno to hear Hiroko Nakamura play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
When André Watts came to Japan as a rising star with outstanding technique, I visited the same venue.
It remained the same after I began living in Osaka, which I had chosen as the stage for my life.
As I wrote long ago, I was convinced that the sole advantage of living in a large city such as Tokyo or Osaka was being able to attend concerts when world-class classical musicians came to Japan.
Born and raised in Yuriage, a wonderful port town, and educated in Sendai, a city of learning and the City of Trees, I had never considered any other advantages of living in Tokyo or Osaka.
After I began running my own real estate business in Osaka, I realized that the greatest advantage of living in Tokyo and Osaka was that these were the only two areas where real estate could be bought and sold, regardless of the sums involved.
That was why I considered investing substantial sums in real estate only in these two areas.
That was my management policy.
In those days, emerging and established mid-career pianists often gave concerts at Kosei Nenkin Kaikan.
Michel Béroff playing Maurice Ravel, Nelson Freire, Alfred Brendel, and others were all truly wonderful talents.
Those known as the great masters performed at Festival Hall.
Maurizio Pollini, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Martha Argerich, and others.
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli performed at Kyoto Bunka Kaikan.
I went to bed at 11:20 p.m., intending to get up at 6:00 a.m., but woke at 4:00 a.m.
I arrived in Tokyo thirty minutes earlier than planned, so I had plenty of time to take photographs in Hama-rikyu Gardens.
It is an exceptionally large garden.
For nearly two hours, I did not drink a single drop of water.
The only thing resembling fluid intake was the broth of the udon we ate for lunch at Marugame Seimen.
We arrived at the venue with plenty of time to spare, long before the doors opened at 1:30 p.m.
We were the first to arrive.
We did not drink a single drop of water before the performance began.
Since it had been such a long time since I had attended a concert, I felt a little nervous.
I had left my glasses in the backpack I checked at the cloakroom, so I could not see the program clearly.
I checked only when Kaho Murata was scheduled to appear and settled in for the concert.
Our seats were in the center of the second row from the front, the best location in the hall.
The concert began with solo performances by three pianists.
As far as I could remember, I had never heard a Steinway played at such close range.
The power of the sound was truly overwhelming.
Since a piano produces sound by striking metal strings, hearing it right in front of you is a wonderful experience.
But it may have been a little too intense for my physical condition that day.
It happened when she began to play the Intermezzo.
Her performance turned my whole body into music.
It was the same sensation I had experienced when listening to Pollini and Ashkenazy at their peak at Festival Hall.
And so, in an instant, I entered a state of listening to music.
Last night, I checked the program and learned that the pianist was Yukine Kuroki, a young pianist with a distinguished record.
For the reasons described above, I had remembered neither her name nor her face.
Tchaikovsky–Pletnev: from the concert suite The Nutcracker, No. 1, “March,” No. 2, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” and No. 4, “Intermezzo.”
Last night, before going to bed, I wanted to listen to this Intermezzo.
Though I should have refrained.
That was how I came to know her name and face.
On YouTube, I listened to a wonderful performance by Nobuyuki Tsujii, but I could not listen to her performance from the day of the concert.
But the performance I heard right in front of me that day was truly magnificent.
I would love to hear her Intermezzo again from that same distance.
Every day, while writing this column, I listen to classical music through the large speakers I have mentioned before.
However, the description of the speakers in the English text confuses the relationship between ALTEC A7, Pioneer, and JBL, and the precise meaning cannot be reconstructed from this sentence alone.
That was why I had heard the pieces played by the next two pianists many times.
Finally, Kaho Murata appeared as the crowning violin soloist.
An incomparable tone and talent.
I spent a time of happiness that could not have been greater.
Since establishing my company, I had maintained a relationship of mutual challenge and improvement with the Osaka branch of a major real estate company.
At the time, that company paid its employees exceptionally large performance-based bonuses, on a scale almost inconceivable for a Japanese company.
One employee at the Osaka branch and two at the Tokyo head office were each named the company’s top employee nationwide in their respective years because of their transactions with my company.
They each received bonuses amounting to tens of millions of yen.
The reason I began listening to the violin and piano was my very close friendship with the person mentioned above, who served as deputy manager of the Osaka branch.
Every Christmas, the company rented out The Symphony Hall and invited distinguished musicians to give a concert for its clients.
One year, he said to me.
“You like music, don’t you, President? This year, we’re inviting the violinist Mariko Senju to give a concert. If you would like, I’ll invite you and your executive director.”
Having read an article saying that Mariko Senju played a Stradivarius, I gladly accepted the invitation.
I looked forward to hearing her play the Stradivarius at The Symphony Hall.
The moment her violin sounded, I felt it.
The piano is wonderful, but the sound of the violin is like the human voice.
The folds of the heart, people’s thoughts, and the workings of the human brain all emerge within that sound.
That day, as I listened to the violin, a story unfolded in my mind.
Had I been a writer, it was the kind of story that would undoubtedly have become a bestseller.
A story unfolded with the resonance.
It was a wonderful experience.
As an added gift, I believe she even played “Musetta’s Waltz” as an encore.
Many years later, on New Year’s Eve in 2020, I discovered the astonishing talents of Kaho Murata and Himari Yoshimura.
This article continues.