Orpheus with pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii

The Van Cliburn competition has long been the most prestigious platform for pivotal career breakthroughs by aspiring pianists. A collective gasp was heard throughout the musical world when the 2009 gold medalist was announced—an unheralded 21-year old Japanese player named Nobuyuki Tsujii, blind since birth, whose final Cliburn performance was called “absolutely miraculous.” Since then, orchestras and recital halls have been scrambling to introduce this phenomenally gifted musician to their audiences. With solo recitals at such centers as Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Festival, and the Kennedy Center, and with concerto engagements with many of the world’s most prominent orchestras, Tsujii remains the darling of the moment, his sudden acclaim easily bolstered by technical skills and musical gifts of astonishing brilliance. The Winnepeg Free Press has praised his “rapturous phrases with an almost improvisatory nature,” and Boston Globe’s Richard Dyer paid him the supreme compliment: “Very seldom do I close my notebook and just give myself over to it, and he made that necessary. I didn’t want to be interrupted in what I was hearing.” His Williams Center debut features a heroic work that has become something of a specialty for him—Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor.” Orpheus opens the program with another Beethoven favorite, the Overture to Coriolan; Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 completes the pleasures of the evening.