When Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii began taking lessons at the age of four, he had already been improvising on his toy piano for two years, much to his mother’s surprise.  

“At first, I would accompany my mother as she sang [to me], but it just so happened that once in a while I would improvise a tune to a story that she had made up; for example, A little bird is singing. I think it was a kind of game where I would make up a tune based on that image and play it,” he says.

Nobuyuki Tsujii sitting at a piano.

Nobuyuki Tsujii. Photo © Giorgia Bertazzi

At the age of seven, Tsujii came under the tutelage of classical pianist, scholar and educator Masahiro Kawakami. “Tsujii had just started first grade at elementary school, and when I met him for the first time at his home, he played two or three pieces, including Debussy’s Arabesque and Disney’s When You Wish Upon a Star,” Kawakami told Japan’s Liberty Web in 2010. 

“I remember being impressed by how honest and cheerful he was, and saying, ‘It’s amazing that he can pick up...