Tidbits . . .

This isn’t strictly 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.

Aimi for Bachauer 2012? (Dec 2011)

Info has emerged on the Piano World forums that Aimi has auditioned for the upcoming Gina Bachauer Young Artists (age 14-18) competition to be held in the last week of June 2012 in Salt Lake City. The Tokyo auditions were held on October 19th, with Aimi presenting her new Chopin and Prokofiev sonatas. I don’t have direct confirmation of this, but when I read the Piano World post I remembered that Yuko Ninomiya attended the Bachauer International Piano Competition as a jury member in June 2010 (profile on Bachauer site).

Information about the competition is given on the Gina Bachauer site here. The list of official competitors will be announced on February 1, 2012. Competition sessions are open to the public. The winner gets $8,000.

Touching tweet (Jul 2011)

Glimpsed in the ephemera of Twitter, a mother telling her son to watch a TV program on Aimi. Unremarkable — except that she happened to be one of Aimi’s early piano teachers in Yamaguchi. How one would love to be able to quiz her about her memories of how it all happened!

Wonders never cease (Jan 2011)

Following Aimi's career, both on this website and behind the scenes, has been nothing if not an adventure — often entertaining, constantly surprising. I often think that no novelist could invent anything quite like it. Many times I have had to drop whatever I was doing just to catch up with her, or absorb some new twist. So, just last week she came out top in the most prestigious category of the main piano competition in Japan. All work stopped here to dig out the details and begin a new Competitions page.

Now, . . . well now I am really lost for words. I mean, I knew Aimi was a bit unconventional, even something of a mould-breaker, but to find that she’s been secretly working on a movie last year . . and, oh my goodness, that it’s, er um, kind of a soft porn movie . . no no no, that won’t do, it’s a movie with difficult social content . . really, really has my head spinning. (See the last entry on the Video Catalog page 4 for details.)

Some people are going to get very censorious about this. But hey, let’s wait until we’ve seen the movie. After all, it’s the official Japanese entry at the Rotterdam film festival. On top of that, her role is said to be no more than a cameo one — a walk-on part. The movie might turn out to be good. Aimi, who has probably faced more cameras than many child actors, might reveal herself to have a talent for acting. And why shouldn’t she try her hand at something different?

Speaking for myself, I admire Aimi’s chutzpah, her unconventionality, the way she breaks the bounds of what some people expect of her as a good little pianist. Maybe it’s time to appreciate that these qualities are part of the mix that goes to make her so remarkable — as a pianist.

Two points to close on. First, Japanese culture is different from ours in the West. Second, if it is a budding social awareness that has led Aimi to contribute her prestige to a film about a difficult social problem — that of children born of rape — then I for one can only welcome her presence among those artists who invest their reputation in efforts to change the dreadful world we live in.

Updates on CD no. 2 (Dec 2010/Jan 2011)

Aimi will be in Hiroshima from 6th December recording for her second CD with EMI Music Japan. No information on what she will be playing or when the CD will be released (but see below). My guess is that the Appassionata and Chopin's Ballade no. 1 will be on the disk. Aimi is said to be playing a formidable Appassionata. One correspondent who heard her perform the sonata in Yokohama (August 28th) says that “her dynamics and phrasing were extremely emotional and really grabbed you by the gut.”

17 Dec: A widely copied press release on Japanese sites confirms that Aimi was at the Mihara Performing Arts Center “Popolo” in Hiroshima 6-9th December. However the only piece that’s mentioned by name is Pathétique. Release of the CD appears to be scheduled for March 2011.

13 Jan: The CD is now listed on several Japanese sites with a slated release date of 9th March. All state that Appassionata (or “Passion”!) will be on the disk. Wow.

And some frightening words of warning about the performing life from Glenn Gould

I’m a huge fan of Gould, and find the parallels between him and Aimi rather fascinating — the total involvement at the keyboard and the charming unassumingness away from it, and the fact that each is such a self-invented performer (I am convinced of that in Aimi’s case). Gould is a lot more articulate than Aimi, though, and after watching the recent clip of her playing to a largely unattentive audience in the café of a very grand hotel in Osaka I found his observations on the routine of performing quite apposite. Here’s what he said:

I suppose I never really did want to give concerts . . . There was a sense of horror which I rather enjoyed when I was 14, 15, 16 years old . . that was kind of fun to play before a live, rabid public and give the best one could and toward which one had to practise for many months. Um, but that wears off very quickly . . that’s a very thin veneer indeed, and once you start doing that every couple of nights and at distant points and distant lands the charm and glamour of that doesn’t last very long. I guess one cheats in giving concerts — you don't explore very much new repertoire, you play the same old tired pieces that you’ve tried out on your recorded public as well as on other “public” publics . . and one does cheat and one does try to get by with as little work as possible and play them in pretty much the same way I suppose. And there is an incredible lack of imagination that sets in and there’s an ongoing need [or “no ongoing need” — Gould mumbles here] to rely on imagination . . and one grows old very quickly. It’s a dreadful life.

From Glenn_Gould_Hereafter on YouTube; interview starts at 1:49 into the clip.

Children and emotions

Here is Yehudi Menuhin on YouTube with some wise words about children, music, and “adult” emotions. Did we need to be told? Well, yes.

A very apposite clip as it’s part of a documentary about Sarah Chang, and after this brief contribution from Sir Yehudi she plays Aimi’s all-time favourite piece — on violin of course. Click on the pic to play on YouTube.

Afterword: In fact I have a sneaky feeling that musical “emotions” are a little different from everyday emotions. Some overlap to be sure (joy, nostalgia, longing), but somehow music has its own emotional territory.

Autumn 2010 — and a fair wind for Aimi?

Reports coming from Japan since August, when Aimi resumed what looks like a pretty heavy schedule for this year, suggest that she is performing rather well. Certainly she seems to be moving and impressing audiences with her playing — see for example the four bloggers’ reviews now posted for the recital at Yokohama on 28th August. Patrick (on YouTube as Aimiklingsor93) has also received a very favourable comment on the Appassionata sonata she has just played at the Kitakyushu Music Festival (17th October), as well as on her Chopin playing there. This is excellent as there was a rumour earlier that she was finding the Appassionata a little difficult to approach (interpretation-wise rather than technically I am sure!). On top of that was a more worrying impression that, from last autumn, and possibly from as early as Krakow a year before, Aimi was finding it difficult to combine a budding performance career with the very heavy demands of the Japanese education system at this particular stage of her schooling (the end of the junior high school stage). Mistakes and omissions were creeping into her playing (this continued into the early part of this year, as for example when Keichi Nomura noted that she missed 10 bars of the Ballade no. 1 at the Suntory Hall recital on 15th May). She was even said to be considering throwing the whole piano thing up to become a beautician. And who could blame her! But what a terrible waste of a remarkable, indeed unique, talent that would have been.

So it is a great pleasure to hear that she is not only playing impressively and confidently, but that she is also quite rapidly building up her repertoire — as she must do if she is to be taken seriously as a professional pianist. So we have the addition of Chopin’s piano concerto no. 1 and his Ballade no. 1, the Schumann Kinderszenen, Beethoven’s Appassionata (as well as the dusting off of the Pathétique), the Mozart KV 466 concerto played (very well) last year in Warsaw, Mozart sonata KV 576, the Liszt Paganini étude she’s now playing as an encore, and, well, even the Ravel Sonatine we are promised in New York next year. All this on top of the core repertoire we know so well and have heard so often. It sounds as though things are looking up, and that Aimi is successfully making the transition from a competition player with a very limited repertoire to become, let us earnestly hope, a major performer with the characteristics that are so unique to her.

Other changes may be needed to make this a reality. Many, including Aimi herself, consider that she must have her musical horizons broadened and her musical understanding refined if she is to realise her full potential.

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 performances 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 concert schedule 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?

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 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)

While on the subject of food . . .

Our Nagoya recital was very much about teas — along with an excellent English afternoon tea (the meal) of cucumber sandwiches and cream scones and all that sort of stuff the rest of the world believes we in England eat! Paul’s company, M&P’s Tea, which sponsored the event, is a supplier of choice teas to the Japanese market. The full English teas that follow performances are a feature of the M&P’s Tea concert series.

So after her exertions at the Bösendorfer keeping everyone enthralled for almost an hour, Aimi was fully entitled to tuck in to the goodies on offer. And of course she did! Clearly the menu of cucumber sandwiches (healthy) and sweet cakes (more to her liking I’m sure) made her very happy, as the pictures show.

Aimi is so utterly endearing that everyone wanted to touch her and hug her. I don’t know why the lady in the top photo grasped her shoulders as she tucked into a sandwich, but she got a big smile from Aimi.

Another tea time concert by Aimi is on the agenda for next November (2011). Nothing fixed up yet, but watch these pages.

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 found herself booked to play a new Chopin piano concerto (no. 1) at rather 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.

*Although there are conflicting reports on exactly how long she had been working on the concerto.

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 Mrs Ninomiya were keen to rush off to a recital by Argerich after one of Aimi’s concerts in Warsaw 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 Dec 2011.

powered by owls