Tidbits . . .

This is not a fan site and so I try to keep serious — I don’t really do personal stuff and try to stick to the performance and career side of things. But from time to time one comes across snippets of information that fill out the wider picture in one way or another and which I can’t slip in elsewhere. This is where they go.

(August 2010: I’ve now reversed the order in which entries appear so that the latest appear at the top)

Dog days of summer (August 2010)

Almost all Aimi’s activities this year have been confined to Japan and we have seen all too little of her. The few YouTube postings of her concerts show us nothing new, so we don’t have much idea how she is developing. The good news is that she is working on another CD — though I don’t know what’s going to be on it. Check out her repertoire this year for likely candidates.

Despite the fact that there’s been little to report on these pages, my August has been full of Aimi. I completed a video of her performances of the Chopin and Mozart piano concertos in Warsaw last year (strictly adding good sound to a camcorder recording of the event), and just now I’m doing the videos from our own recital in Nagoya last October. The Warsaw Chopin piano concerto no. 2, played with the Orchestra of the 18th Century, is simply sublime, and we hope that with the necessary permissions we will be able to post at least some of it on YouTube. The Mozart is also very good, and removed my doubts about Aimi’s response to it after seeing the first movement posted on YouTube in May 2009. Videos of the Nagoya recital will be going up on a dedicated channel belonging to my cousin Paul Lewis, who arranged the event. The first piece to go up will be a rather fine Waldstein, with which Aimi began her recital. After that (though delayed by work I have to do to earn my keep) will be pieces not heard before — Chopin’s Polonaise Héroïque and Barcarolle. She may not have played these last two, and new, pieces in her repertoire to perfection, but they’re good fun, especially the Polonaise. Working with 4 cameras in Final Cut Pro has been challenging to say the least, but I am left with indelible, vivid memories of Aimi’s broad shoulders and strong arms beating the hell out of the Bösendorfer (see the beginning of my Tea Party video). I say beat the hell, but she also plays an exquisitely delicate second movement of the Waldstein. The links will go up on the video pages when the clips have been posted.

The more I see, and hear, of Aimi, the more perfectly extraordinary I think she is. It is just astonishing that so few professional musicians and music management people outside Japan have heard of her.

Closed eyes and broken hearts

Aimi has been eliciting two interesting responses (among many others no doubt) from her conductors. These are sensitive matters, so you will understand if I do not name names. Recently the first mild — and I’m sure partly admiring — remonstrations have been heard that she plays so frequently with her eyes shut that the conductor feels he is losing touch with her. In fact this makes me wonder if she isn’t so confident of what she wants to do that she uses this as a way of getting the conductor to follow her!

And the other? Aimi’s conductors are developing an alarming tendency to fall in love with her. Oh dear, what tittle-tattle. But is anyone surprised?

Aimi and the Prince of Darkness

I’m not entirely sure I should be telling this story, but it’s most interesting and throws light on Aimi’s acute and well-tuned musical sensibilities. Earlier this summer she and Mrs Ninomiya went to hear Krystian Zimerman playing in Tokyo. Zimerman, the reclusive Polish pianist now residing in Switzerland, is said to be playing certain Chopin pieces in an altogether new and “diabolical” manner far removed from what I think of as Aimi’s cherry blossom style. After hearing this devilish stuff Aimi is said to have told Ninomiya that she could not continue to play, and indeed she didn’t go near a piano for some time. Worse, an audition with Zimerman was arranged for her but she declined the offer, saying she was too frightened to play for the author of these demonic interpretations! Well, she probably didn’t quite put it like that, but you know what I mean. Aimi knew of Zimerman before this episode and was a great admirer even before her unsettling experience of the eccentric Pole’s infernal ways with her favourite composer. Whatever, to me this curious tale demonstrates how open Aimi is to interpretations quite different from her own.

Right: The “terrifying” Krystian Zimerman. Photo © Zbigniew Sawicz

Is she really that interested in classical music?

To the disbelief (and probably horror) of some of my Aimi contacts I began to ask this question some time last year (2009). But I think not . . not really, anyway . . in the sense that I doubt she could tell you much about her favourite composers, or even about the pieces she plays regularly. My impression is that she’s just not “into” classical music like that. Aimi should be taken at her word: she’s an ordinary, normal contemporary girl with much the same interests as other girls, and that includes pop music, especially by her favourite boy band Tohoshinki.

I suspect that her classical piano playing started as the performance of “party pieces”, rewarded by the glow that pleasing and surprising people brought. It may even have become the main way that a very shy girl had of communicating. On the way, of course, she quickly showed that she had the most remarkable sensibility and skills. But my hunch is that she can’t be properly understood without an appreciation of her self-proclaimed ordinariness. Aimi is most definitely not some classical nerd! For me this actually adds to her mystery — leaving one wondering how on earth she came to play in the way she does.

I really should add here that it was Patrick T who first drew my attention to Aimi’s ordinariness away from the keyboard. Largely he was dealing with innumerable comments on YouTube to the effect that Aimi is a being from another planet, a reincarnation of Mozart, or in direct communication with Chopin. Patrick, who has met her, swept aside all this nonsense about her being some kind of supernatural hyper-wunderkind, insisting that she was an absolutely normal schoolkid who liked the things that absolutely normal schoolkids like. And he’s absolutely right. Except, of course, when she goes near a keyboard . . .

The real Aimi — revealing her secret (and very normal) passion for sticky buns and ice creams.

Click for an enlarged and enhanced version of an old pic from her Japanese fan club site

(www17.ocn.ne.jp/~aimifan)

Wall to wall Aimi TV

With her new fame, so far this year there have been at least two programs about Aimi on Japanese TV. One interesting mini-doc was aired by Station KRY in her home prefecture, Yamaguchi, on 7th January. This has several sequences from earlier years that haven’t been seen before, and with the help of a Japanese friend I have prepared an illustrated transcript in english. See Yamaguchi TV transcript.

Hard practice (April 2010)

In a short interview in Mitsubishi Jishu Classy Café (in Japanese) Aimi claims to be practising for 4-5 hours a day. That’s remarkable from a girl who is renowned for being piano-shy, and I wonder if her new-found dedication has to do with the fact that not long ago she suddenly found herself booked to play a new Chopin piano concerto (no. 1) at short notice! Not only that, she will be playing it in Tokyo’s prestigious Suntory Hall. (For details see the May 15th entry in the 2010 Concert Schedule.) After that feat, she’ll no doubt be grateful for a long break over the hot, humid Japanese summer. Aimi was quizzed about her dislike of practising in a recent interview — see our english translation here.

Entranced . . . ?

Many people, myself included, watching Aimi’s videos have wondered if she goes into some sort of trance state when she plays. If the good lady herself is to be believed, she definitely does not. My cousin’s wife asked her precisely this question last year. She asked Aimi if she “went somewhere else” when she played. Aimi was emphatic that no, playing is hard work and she has to concentrate all the time. In this respect, then, she’s much like other musicians in having to strike a balance between giving your emotions and inspiration full play and at the same time listening hard and keeping complete control over what you’re doing.

A piano professor's despair

Here’s a great comment in a blog Fabrice au Japon. He reports being sent a clip of Aimi playing the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 26 by “une émérite professeur de piano du conservatoire qui envisage ‘de se reconvertir dans l’exportation de tissus provençaux’ après l’avoir vue...” — Loosely, he’s saying that after seeing Aimi playing the allegro from the Coronation concerto, this “emeritus” piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire thought she might as well give up and retrain for a job exporting fabrics from Provence. Several pianists have made similar comments on YouTube, but this is the highest level I’ve seen it from!

Better than Argerich?

I don’t have reliable information on this, but it seems that Aimi sees Martha Argerich as something of a model and even a yardstick against which to measure her own abilities. So, for example, she and Yuko Ninomiya were keen to rush off to a recital by Argerich after one of Aimi’s concerts in Wartsaw in August 2009. In turn, both Argerich and Evgeny Kissin admire Aimi’s playing. In a comment posted on YouTube about 6/7 Feb 2009 under Jakehun’s video of Mozart PC no. 26, Patrick Tabet (now Aimiklingsor93) reports that Argerich told him at a Verbier festival that she couldn’t play as well as Aimi at the same age. Now that’s high praise, and shows that Aimi’s accomplishments are not going unnoticed!

And a teacher's tribute

There could hardly be a better judge of Aimi’s abilities than Yuko Ninomiya, her teacher since she was eight years old. Here’s what Ninomiya is recorded as saying in a televised interview at the time of Aimi’s appearance at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in June 2005.

“More and more I hear her, I really think she is . . . I don't want to say loudly [i.e. out loud] in front of her . . . she’s a genius. Secretly I say genius . . . but yes, she’s a genius.”

Aimi and Mrs Ninomiya seen at work in a recent video posted on YouTube. Click on the pic for a larger version. For the YouTube clip, click here. Aimi and Yuko are only seen right at the end.

Aimi's a hummer

Not a hummingbird, though she is that too. Like other greats before her, Aimi hums while playing, even when she is recording. It's quite uncanny, for example, to hear her voice in a recording of Bach’s Partita no. 2 BWV 826 if you are a fan of Glenn Gould. However, as she has a light and very female voice, her singalongs are rather more musical than Gould’s or Serkin’s famous accompaniments!

What I reelly reelly want, by Aimi

“What I want most is SUTANUEI piano.” As quoted on her Fan Club site about three years ago. Sutanuei? It’s a big, black, glossy music machine. Try taking the “u” out of “Sut” and you’ll get it!

Back to top

Page created 13 May 2009. Last modified 5 September 2010.

powered by owls