Dark eyes fierce with concentration, Aimi listens to Professor Yutaka Kato explaining a finer point of the Coronation Concerto. Aged about 8 1/2, she was preparing for her appearance at the Hupfer Piano Concours in Saga Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan, in March 2004. After the session Kato tells the interviewer that he has never come across such talent in a child and that musically Aimi “has what an adult has.” (Still from Yamaguchi TV documentary broadcast January 2010.)

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Television documentary broadcast by Yamaguchi TV (KRY) on 7 January 2010

This local station serves Yamaguchi prefecture only, so the program would have had a limited audience centred on Aimi’s home city of Ube at the southern end of Honshu Island. Appropriately the program was titled “Passionate TV” (Nekketu in Japanese, literally “hot blood”).

Station KRY has been following Aimi’s career for some six years and has broadcast programs about Ube’s famous daughter several times before, so they have some interesting material. Especially interesting is the session with Professor Yutaka Kato (see picture above) preparing for an early performance of Mozart’s Coronation concerto. We also hear further indications that Aimi’s remarkable abilities are almost entirely self-created — that it is she, and not a parent or a teacher, who has driven herself from the start.

My thanks as ever to mimiporu in Japan for translating the program. Sadly Yamaguchi TV have refused us permission to post a version with English subtitles on YouTube.

Program Transcript

(Note: To make it easier to navigate this transcript I’ve divided it into Parts.

These and the subject headings I’ve used aren’t strictly part of the broadcast program.)

PART 1: Introduction — Schoolgirl with a Dream

In the TV studio

Male presenter: Today we introduce a noteworthy person of this year. She is Ms Aimi Kobayashi, who we [first] introduced on this program 6 years ago.

Clip from 2004 program: Interview with Aimi broadcast September 8, 2004, shortly before 9th birthday. She is seated at a piano in a Yamaguchi TV studio (see pics below), possibly the same studio as in the present broadcast. She’s in her “edelweiss” costume, which she was wearing for performances in her eighth year. A caption reads: “Aimi Kobayashi, in 3rd grade of Magura elementary school in Ube, Yamaguchi.” An interviewer talks to her before she plays:

Aimi (at piano): Hello.

Interviewer: Hello. What is your name?

Aimi: Aimi Kobayashi. I feel a little nervous now.

Interviewer: Only a little?!

Female presenter of 2010 program (voiceover): I was surprised at her performance.

Clip from 2004 program: Aimi plays opening of Chopin Etude Op 25 no. 2 (as seen on YouTube on another occasion)

Interviewer from 2004 program: What is your dream for the future?

Aimi: [To be] a pianist.

Flashbacks to a program by Yamaguchi TV in 2004. Left: Aimi confesses that she’s feeling a little nervous. Centre: Those small elegant hands pick out the first note of Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 no. 2, which she was playing at the time. Right: All nerves gone, Aimi plays for the studio camera. Afterwards she tells the presenter that her dream is to be — you’ve guessed it — a pianist. Aimi was a couple of weeks short of her ninth birthday at the time.

Back in the TV studio

Male presenter (to sighs of appreciation from the four people in the studio): At that time she played piano like a professional pianist.

Female presenter (to co-presenter): I was drawn into to her music by her power of expression, though her technique was also wonderful. (To viewers) Now she is 14 years old, in the second grade of junior high school. She, who was born and grew up in Ube city, moved to Tokyo two years ago. Her big news came to us at the New Year. It is that she will make her CD debut. We are listening to the CD in this studio now. (Aimi is heard playing part of Chopin’s second scherzo.) Her fame was widely known from childhood, so we have often presented her in our programs. In this program we’ll follow the course of her development and introduce you to the kind of pianist she has become now.

PART 1 (cont.): Fast forward to December 2009

Clip: Aimi’s CD debut concert on December 14, 2009, at Suntory Hall, Tokyo

Aimi is shown coming on stage, playing part of Chopin Etude 10.4, Waldstein, then a photo session while she plays the Mazurka Op. 63 no. 3.

Female presenter: The concert was held in commemoration of her CD debut last December in Tokyo. It was Aimi who, now 14 years old, appeared on the stage. Her video clips, posted on [YouTube], have been watched all over the world as many as four million times. She made her debut as the youngest Japanese pianist [ever] to have been given a contract with a recording label [EMI Japan] at the age of 14.

Clip: Aimi after debut concert. She is on stage, seated in front of piano facing auditorium

Aimi: I have been surprised at my contract [with EMI Japan]. My wish is that a lot of people will be able to listen to my performance. So I am very glad to have made my CD debut.

PART 2: Early years, based on TV Yamaguchi documentary made in 2004

Clip: At home in Ube in 2004

Aimi is seen scrapping with her younger brother on the floor. There’s a piano in the background.

Female presenter: When we met her first six years ago she was an eight-year-old. Still innocent-faced, she was in the second grade of elementary school. However, she had participated in piano competitions since childhood and won gold prize in Japan’s biggest competition while in the third grade of elementary school, surpassing the junior high school and high school students. As the youngest winner of first prize in many competitions, she has rewritten the record books.

(During narration, scene switches to clip of Aimi, at home, playing part of Chopin Nocturne no. 20 — see pics below. Then the prizes she has won and other awards on a side table.)

Clips: Aimi, aged three, marching on stage to play an unidentified piece (since removed from YouTube). Then part of the Clementi sonatina clip at age 4. Then part of the Schubert Impromptu Op. 90 no. 2 at age 7.

Female presenter: She started to take piano lessons at three. Her parents wanted her to go to music school to overcome her shyness. It was there that she encountered music for the first time. She set herself the challenge of playing more and more demanding pieces, one after the other. Her talent was the talk of the teachers at the school.

“She set herself more and more demanding pieces . . . her talent was the talk of the teachers at the school.”

Here Aimi is seen at home in 2004 when she was eight.

There are two pianos, side by side. She's playing Nocturne no. 20.

2004 was also when she first played Mozart's Coronation concerto with orchestra — see the next part of the TV program below.

PART 2 (cont.): Rehearsing for a performance of the Coronation concerto in 2004

Clip: In Professor Kato’s teaching room, early 2004

Aimi is seen at a practice session for the Coronation concerto with Professor Yutaka Kato of the Department of Music at Kwassui Women’s College, Nagasaki. Aimi would at most be about 8 1⁄2. For pics see below.

(Shot of posters for the Hupfer Piano Concours, held that year on 27-28 March.)

Presenter: [By now Aimi] had won many competitions. As a result, she was being invited to play at concerts in various towns. She played [her first?] concerto with orchestra when at about the end of the second grade of elementary school [when she was 8]. The concert venue was in Saga Prefecture. Aimi and Professor Kato (the conductor) are rehearsing.

[Note: According to the PTNA’s house magazine, Aimi’s first performance with orchestra was in 2004 (March 27/28), at the Acros Fukuoka symphony hall with the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra. Saga prefecture, also on Kyushu Island, is southwest of Fukuoka prefecture, so it seems they may be talking about another occasion here. The celebrated performance of the Coronation with the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra was some time later, on 25 January 2006, when Aimi was 10.]

Prof. Kato: Let’s play. Back to your stool. [Are you going to go back] under the piano?

(Aimi, who is tiny, goes under the piano to reach the piano stool.)

Left: Aimi arrives in Professor Kato’s teaching room. There’s a camera crew there, and she feels dreadfully embarrassed. Centre: Aimi spots a camera pointing at her and doesn’t much care for it — moments later she pokes the lens with a forefinger. Right: Aimi does things her own way, and this is how she gets to the piano stool to play. She’s tiny, only just able to see over the two pianos in the room.

Continues with clips of Coronation practice session

Presenter: Ms Aimi does the exercises given by the teacher until she can do it correctly. If she is not able to do it, her mother would tell her to stop playing piano. Aimi is keen to please her mother.

Prof. Kato: Semiquaver . . . This part (consisting of semiquavers) is difficult for everyone to play . . like da da da . . . Be conscious of [the beat]: one, two, three, four [the quadruple rhythm] when you play this. Otherwise, when the orchestra sounds “jan” immediately after this is finished, both sides may be delayed. When the music gets to this point, watch for my signal to start.

Top left: Aimi quickly gets down to work and forgets the cameras. She is playing fluently, and probably just as well as two years later with the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra.

Above: Chopping out the beat with his hand, Professor Kato explains how the passage in the first movement which they're going over should be played, while Aimi listens intently.

Lower left: Her copy of the score is annotated all over with coloured scribbles.

Clip: Aimi playing with accompanist playing orchestral part at 2nd piano.

Presenter: She not only understands but also seeks [to give the music] her [own] expression. This is difficult [even] for an adult.

Clip: Comments from Prof. Kato after the rehearsal session

Prof. Kato: It’s the first time I have met such a child. She has a terrific talent. Her tempo and expression are marvelous. She has what an adult has.

Left: Rehearsal continues with an accompanist playing the orchestral part on a second piano while Professor Kato conducts. Centre: Study in concentration. Right: Afterwards Professor Kato, clearly delighted with Aimi, tells the presenter that he's never met a child with such talent before. Marvelous tempo and expression, he says, she has everything an adult musician has.

Clip: Aimi at home, where she's seen playing with a white poodle (pics below)

Presenter: How has this power of expression been cultivated in an eight-year-old child? It is the environment in which she has listened to real music since she was small.

Clip: Back in Prof. Kato’s teaching room

Kato: Do you listen to CDs of piano [music]?

Aimi: My home is full [of CDs].

Kato: Really?

Aimi (tells him whose CDs she has): (Maria João) Pires and Ashkenazy and . . .

Presenter: Both are international pianists. Ms Aimi yearned for them.

Kato: Whose performance do you like?

Aimi (shyly): I don’t want to say it. “P” adheres to the name [who I like]. [It seems she’s hinting that it’s Pires]

Left: Aimi goes rather coy when Prof Kato asks her if she listens to piano music at home; Right: He asks her whose CDs she has, and she counts the names out on her palm.

Then, when he asks who her favourite is, she is overcome by modesty and can’t bring herself to say his name — all she is able to say is that it begins with “P” — she means Pires.

PART 3: Brief jump forward to 2005/2006 illustrating Aimi's leap to international fame

Clips of Russian newspapers

Pics in one newspaper are of her playing in New York (!) in June 2005.

Clip: Moscow performance in December 2006 playing the Chopin Impromptu encore.

Presenter: The renown of a little pianist, Kobayashi, has spread through the world. She has also performed on stage in Paris and Moscow and at Carnegie Hall in the United States. Through the piano she experienced a world that a grade-schooler would not be able to experience.

Clip: Interview with Aimi aged ?? — looks 11 or 12 — possibly on return from Russia in late 2006

Interviewer: What is the best thing that playing piano has brought you up to now?

Aimi: I think that it has been meeting different people and going to a lot of places where I could perform.

Interviewer: What’s the hardest part of playing piano?

Aimi:: Practicing.

PART 4: Family and school life in Ube, various periods

Photos of Aimi as baby, with dad aged about 1, and with baby brother aged about 3

Presenter: Her parents wanted her to spend a life that is brimful of love. So she was named Aimi.* They were not blessed with a child for a long time and she was a long-awaited baby. They know nothing about music. It has been their hope that she would grow up through piano.

[*The name Aimi means one who loves beauty]

A delightful photo of Aimi at about one year old (I guess) with her very charming-looking Dad Seiji

Clip: Aimi and her brother Hiroki at their grandparents’ home in Ube (right)

Presenter: After school she would go to play at her grandparents’ home next door almost every day. Her younger brother thought she was a rather frightening elder sister.

Hiroki: If I try to touch her textbooks, she scolds me, “No!” Even if I haven’t touched them she punches me!

Gandmother: My only wish is that she grows into a person who doesn’t give trouble.

All begins peacefully enough as Aimi ropes her Grandad to help with a cat’s cradle she has started . . .

But then Hiroki spills the beans on her . . . “If I try to touch her textbooks she scolds ‘NO!’” he says loudly . . “and even if I don't she hits me!” he adds, banging his head dramatically . . .

Hiroki seems to have scored a hit himself — and Aimi has to stifle an embarrassed giggle.

“All I want is that she grows into someone who doesn’t give trouble”, declares Grandma forthrightly. Clearly she knows her granddaughter well. But Aimi isn’t the least put out this time and has another go at her cat’s cradle.

From this scene, filmed at least two years before and shown earlier in the documentary, it would seem that Hiroki speaks from experience.

For, like any sensible sister, Aimi keeps her kid brother under firm control — and this is one of the ways she does it.

Presenter: Aimi began to worry, too, as her activities as a pianist increased . . .

Clip of Aimi and two friends ?returning from school along a country road

Presenter: Aimi had been shuttling between Tokyo and Yamaguchi [by plane] twice a month. And performing at the same time as having to do school work was becoming difficult as the demands of her concert appearances increased.

Continues with clip of Aimi at school: She is seen being presented with an award in front of her classmates, which makes her burst into tears (pics on right).

Presenter: Although she loved the school and her friends, she decided to move to Tokyo [to be near her teacher, Mrs Ninomiya] to achieve her dream during the winter of her 5th-grade year.

PART 5: Performance in Fukuoka, 2007

Clips: Acros Fukuoka Symphony Hall (Fukuoka city, Kyushu) April 2, 2007

Presenter: After moving to Tokyo, she made her debut as a pianist in spring at the age of 11.

Aimi is seen playing Pathétique in curlers (more of this TV program is seen on YouTube), and then . . .

Clip continues in the dressing room just before Aimi goes onstage

Someone asks her: Do you feel nervous about your debut?

Aimi: I haven’t felt nervous yet.

Questioner: Were you able to sleep well last night?

Aimi: Yes.

Continues with clip of a crowd of concertgoers assembling outside concert hall

Presenter: To witness the birth of a little pianist, 1,700 people attended her debut concert. The curtain rises.

[Additional exchange from “Aimi Kobayashi 1” on YouTube. This is from the same TV program as the excerpts shown in this Yamaguchi TV documentary.

Scene: In the wing left of stage just before the performance, where Aimi seems to be uneasy

Conductor: Is there something wrong?

Aimi (in a hushed voice): The audience is rustling.

Conductor: Are you going on stage?

Aimi: What! Now?

End of additional exchange.]

Clip: Stage wing

Conductor: Go! Yes! Let's do our best! Yes . . . Go!

Clip continues: Aimi is shown performing during the concert, including with orchestra playing Beethoven Piano Concerto no. 1

Presenter: Her dream is to become a pianist whose performances impress people. This was the debut concert at which she realized her dream. . . . She performed three piano [solo] pieces and one piano concerto. She played [all] the encores that were demanded of her, one after another.

PART 6.1: Tokyo early 2010 — Lesson with Mrs Ninomiya

Clip: Street scene in Tokyo, and it's now 2010

Presenter: We visited Aimi, who is studying in Tokyo. . . .

Clip: Aimi arriving at Mrs Ninomiya’s flat for a lesson

Presenter: Now she is 14 years old and is in the second grade of junior high school. Two years ago, her family of four moved to the apartment block where her teacher lives three floors above. When a concert is approaching, she takes lessons with her teacher almost every day.

Left and centre: In another recent TV program Aimi joked that she now traveled to her piano lessons by elevator — an allusion to the fact that until the family moved to Tokyo she made a fortnightly trip by airplane from Ube to take lessons. As they live a few floors below Mrs Ninomiya’s apartment, it seems that here she may be arriving straight from school. Right: After shedding her shoes in the entrance hall, Aimi goes into Mrs N’s piano room. Christmas decorations in the hall tell us that these scenes were filmed some time around New Year 2010.

Clip: Aimi in Ninomiya’s piano room plays opening bars of Chopin Ballade no. 1

Ninomiya: Don’t decrescendo. To continue it to the next [part], play like this.

Continues, with Aimi now playing another piece

Presenter: It is said that a person feels the essence of music when they are between 12 and 14 years old. This time is the most important. Isn’t that so? [Apparently addressing Mrs N]

Ninomiya (voiceover, then switches from Aimi to show her talking at piano): Yes. Of course, playing well is important. But the audiences are looking to see whether the performer has grown into a mature person. They recognize his humanity, and the performance in which this is shown.

Clip continues with ?another piece

Presenter: Two years have passed since Aimi started living in Tokyo. Now she has overcome the loneliness of separation from intimate friends and the difficulty of adapting to her new life. She is receptive to life in Tokyo.

Clip continues with ?another piece . . .

Left: They start with Chopin’s Ballade no. 1. Centre and Right: Of the opening passage, Mrs N says: “Don’t decrescendo . . . play it like this.”

Left: Attention to detail — Aimi places her left forefinger on the C she has just played with her thumb so she can move her thumb up to the G and play it legato. Centre: “Audiences recognize the maturity and humanity that a pianist shows in their performance.” Right: The lesson continues against the backdrop of a kelim on the back wall. Aimi and Mrs N are playing together. Aimi moves quite a lot during lessons but perhaps not as much or as dramatically as during performance.

Left: “Life in Tokyo is good for me."

Clip of Aimi after lesson, sideways on piano stool in Ninomiya’s piano room

Aimi: In Tokyo I can go to concerts a lot and also to the music school.* Though I felt loneliness at first, now I think life in Tokyo is good for me.

(*The Music School for Children, affiliated with Toho Gakuen College Music Department.)

PART 6.2: Tokyo early 2010 — Aimi has other interests . . . !

Photo of Aimi with friends

Presenter: With her friends she goes to karaoke. Influenced by these friends, she has started to become interested in something . . . the CDs of pop singers.

Clip of Aimi in a room in her family's apartment. She's fishing CDs/DVDs out of a bag . . .

Aimi: These are lovely, aren’t they. Hai!

Presenter: —

Aimi: —-

Presenter: Mrs Ninomiya has told her that such interests are undesirable . . .

Aimi (whispering): My teacher comes in here. I must hide them.

Presenter: She who is in the second grade of junior high school is interested in many things. However, what interests her most is piano [music] of all ages.

(Aimi has now put the CDs away and laughs at something the presenter says to her.)

PART 6.3: Tokyo Dec 2009 — CD Debut recital and close

Clip of Aimi bowing after performance at age 3 seen earlier in program, followed by various short clips up to EMI debut concert in Dec 2009

Presenter: She started to take piano lesson from three years old. Her dream was to become a pianist some day. She went through many stages, and experienced many meetings and partings. Now she is 14 years old and has made her CD debut as the youngest Japanese pianist [to do so] . . . Little pianist, Ms Aimi advances toward a further dream.

Close of documentary. Back in the TV studio

Murmurs of appreciation all round at Aimi's playing.

Male presenter: I have been enchanted by her performance. I feel that she has developed further in Tokyo.

Female presenter: I have been drowned in her world . . .

[... followed by more comment from presenters]

Female presenter: Mrs Ninomiya said: “Up to now she has relied only on her talent. From now it is essential that she puts some effort into developing herself.”

Clips from EMI debut concert continue

Aimi realizing her dream. Photoshoot on occasion of her CD debut concert at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, on 14 December 2009.

(Omitted) Presenter gives information on how to order the CD and her concert schedule. More studio chat between presenters.

Male presenter: We are looking forward to her becoming a more wonderful pianist. Ms Aimi has already flown out to the world. We look forward to seeing how far she will fly. We hope that she will come to perform in her birth place, Yamaguchi.

Here the part of the program about Aimi ends.

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