This is the English translation of my Japanese article to appear in Nikkan San on October 17, 2021, as a part of my bi-weekly column, “The Way of the Pianist.”
I love playing for children. It’s not only because I love children. It’s that they ask wonderful questions. I have to really think to answer many of their unpredictable, uninhibited curiosity. And sometimes my own answers I come up with surprise myself.
“How do your fingers move so fast?”
Once, a kindergartner asked me. Many at a concert may wonder the same thing, but he was the first one to ask me to my face this very question. And I noted that he did not ask how I came to be able to play fast. He asked how it is that my fingers move so fast. In fact, it is curious. It’s like magic. How do human brains and fingers manage that high a speed?
I took a moment to think. My silence suspended the air in the concert hall with a bit of tension. “What is fast?” I was thinking.
“When you focus intensely, time slows down,” I told him. “To me, my fingers are not moving fast. They are moving as they do everyday with each practice session. But because I am focused, to the listeners the notes that come out become unusually fast.” An adult let out an audible sigh of “aha!” But I wonder if my answer was communicative to a kindergartner.
Now, I would explain it to him like this. First, I would ask him what his favorite food is. And then I would ask him if he ever found the food gone before he wanted it to; if he has ever surprised his parents with the speed he finished his meal. Did he mean to eat with speed? No. He was just focused on the food. It’s just like that. I am giving it the attention and the time that each note requires because of what it is.
Over the decades of the pursuit of my pianism, I have now come to ensure not just the attention and the proper timing that each note requires, but to send each off with love and care. It’s just like life. The most precious things in life tend to be ephemeral.
