It takes a mainstream classical musician of “superstar” status to fill the 2600-plus seats of Sydney Opera House Concert Hall for a solo concert, and when blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii (Nobu) closed Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s International Pianists in Recital series it was obvious why the customary City Recital Hall venue, at half that capacity, would be unable to contain him.

Packed to the gunwales with adults and children, this was an audience you would only normally expect for artists of the stature of Chinese pianist Lang Lang or local star violinist Ray Chen, and the excitement in the house was palpable long before the 36-year-old virtuoso was led on stage.

For the next two hours Nobu showed his phenomenal memory and talents in a fearless program which ranged over some of the repertoire’s behemoths, from Ludwig van Beethoven’s The Tempest Sonata, through some finger-busting Franz Liszt and no less challenging favourites by Maurice Ravel, ending in a bravura set of jazz-tinged Études by Nikolai Kapustin in which he channelled Rachmaninov at one moment and that other great blind pianist Art Tatum the next.

Nobuyuki Tsujii. Photo © Yuji Hori

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