Japanese pianist returns with plan to straddle East & West
Shigemi Sato

TOKYO—Azumi Nishizawa’s slender fingers stroke the keyboard as she performs a piano concerto in front of a Buddhist altar, backed up by a wind quintet from the world famous Geneva orchestra Suisse Romande.
Hundreds of visitors have gathered on an early April evening when cherry trees are in full bloom to listen to the music being performed in the inner sanctuary of the 1,200-year-old Kiyomizu Temple.
Nishizawa feels that her heart has come home. After spending a soul-searching 10 years in Europe, studying and performing, the Madrid-based 30-year-old has decided to straddle the two cultures. “As a Japanese, I have always wanted to perform at a Buddhist temple,” said Nishizawa, a convert to Lutheranism who studied under Dominique Merlet at the Conservatoire de Geneve and has played at Catholic churches in Spain.
“Buddhism is quite a generous religion as it accepts different things. I felt close to the audience as we were all in front of God,” she said. “In a totally unfamiliar setting, we just tried to let the sound out. I could play quite naturally.” The free recital in the ancient city of Kyoto was a highlight of her four-concert tour in Japan this month, which ended at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan hall.
Her programme included Brahms’ Variation on Haydn’s St. Anthony Chorale, Mozart’s Quintet for piano, oboe, clarinet and horn, Bizet’s Carmen Fantaisie, Ravel’s Piano Concerto and Falla’s “Love, the Magician.”
“The visitors appreciated the recital as befitting the temple’s atmosphere,” said Kazuhiro Iwata, who promotes a few concerts a year at Kiyomizu. The temple, which draws some four million visitors a year, is famous for its 13-metre (43-foot) high veranda perched on a cliff. There is a popular Japanese saying — “jump off the veranda at Kiyomizu” — which refers to risk-taking. And the recital, the first by a European classical unit at the temple, may have opened a door for Nishizawa, whose tastes range from Chopin and French artists to Spanish baroque harpsichord music. “I can do more concerts at historic temples with various combinations of trumpet, guitar and harpsichord,” she said, adding that another celebrated Kyoto temple has invited her to play.
She has performed just a few times a year at home, accounting for around 10 percent of her engagements, which have also taken her to France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and China since she won the Geneva conservatory’s top prize in 2002. Now Nishizawa hopes to play at home as often as in Europe, sometimes in collaboration with European musicians, although she knows it is difficult to penetrate the world’s second biggest music market. Japan is cluttered with events, with 2,458 classical concerts by overseas performers last year, along with 9,012 by homegrown artists.
“She is still new here and things may not go so easy as in Europe because Japan is closed,” said Michiko Okamoto, who taught Nishizawa at Tokyo’s Toho Gakuen School of Music, the alma mater of maestro Seiji Ozawa. She’d better not hurry but take it one at a time with care,” Okamoto added, describing Nishizawa’s piano playing as “natural, rich and based on fundamentals”.
Nishizawa said Japanese audiences, who used to demand grand numbers such as Beethoven, have come to enjoy simpler music.
“They like it even if I don’t perform in a theatrical manner. I think classical music has mixed well into Japanese culture,” she said. “Japanese may be slower than Europeans in responding but they seem really attentive.”
Nishizawa has come a long way since she started playing piano at six as the only daughter of non-musical parents. She developed a taste for French music and literature as a child, particularly flamboyant pianist Samson Francois and gloomy poet Arthur Rimbaud.
After graduating from Toho Gakuen, she has followed in the footsteps of many Japanese classical musicians — to study abroad and stay on to work. Despite her music delving into the religious sphere, Nishizawa is discreet about her personal views. She said only that she was raised, like many Japanese, as a virtual atheist within a Buddhist culture but in Geneva was baptised a Lutheran. “There was a time when I was agonised over religious views as a Japanese,” she said.
“I was really anxious about what would happen when I played here. At the temple, I performed with a sacred feeling — and it was a very wonderful experience”.