|
 |
Mini Autobiography
by Takayoshi Wanami
I was born in Tokyo on 1st April
1945. Japan was at the last stage of World War I I, and Tokyo had been
heavily bombarded almost everyday. My mother, who is 78, recalls that
on the day she gave birth, she frequently heard the sound of explosions
around the house by the U S air-raids, and my father took her and the
baby into the wardrobe to sleep. Luckily, all my family members survived
and the war was over in August.
About the same time when they were liberated from the war, my parents noticed that something was not in order with their 4 months old child. The baby seemed to have no sight. They took me to a prominent eye doctor, and he immediately diagnosed that I was born blind and my sight unrecoverable. Two months later, my 2-year-old sister died from food poisoning. Her health had been so much weakened because of the shortage of food.
In these extraordinary circumstances, my parents began to concentrate on nurturing their remaining blind boy. They accepted their fate reluctantly but positively.
They noticed that I showed special interest in anything with sound, and music particularly. Following a music teacher's advice, I was taken to my first violin lesson at the age of 4 at the school teaching the famous Suzuki Method. A year later, my family moved to Osaka, the second largest city in Japan, and I continued to learn playing the violin from a new teacher, mr K. Tsuji, who taught me very strictly. His lesson was long, detailed and frequent. Before I was 7 and began going to school, I was at Mr Tsuji's house five days a week to have a one hour lesson each time. Many years later, he told me that he was already thinking of my future as a blind man, and he thought it was his task to train me to possess the ability to be a professional violinist.
I didn't particularly enjoy the violin lessons because the teacher was so strict and uncompromising. But I began to like European classical music very much, and at home I often listened to the radio and asked my mother to play the records of symphonies, songs, piano or violin music. My mother was extremely helpful. She learned the Braille music code and began transcribing the piece which I was to study. I was so lucky to have received the proper music education, to learn new pieces by reading Braille and not from hearing. I also started to play the piano when I went to the school for the blind.
Mr Tsuji was excellent in training children, but his music interpretation was rather old-fashioned. When I was nine, i won first prize in the All Japan Blind Students Music Competition, and two years later I took part in the main-stream students music competition. But it was a complete failure. I did not even get to the second round in the tokyo metropolitan block. That was a big shock for me, but even more for my parents. After careful thought, they decided to change my teacher, and I was accepted to become a pupil of mr S. Sumi. His way of teaching was quite different from Mr Tsuji. He taught me just once a week, and when i played a piece, he pointed out what was not right. But sometimes he even didn't tell me how to do it, so I had to discover the way to make it better by myself. With his enormous help, I made satisfactory progress and won the first prize in the All Japan Student Competition in 1958.
In 1963, I appeared as the soloist of Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and it was my official debut in tokyo. Two years later, I came for the first time to Europe to take part in the prestigious Long-Tibaud International Competition in Paris. There I was selected as one of the six finalists, and performed the Brahms Concerto with the Orchestra of French National Radio. It was an unforgettable experience from which I learned that we could communicate through music so marvellously even if we use completely different language to speak. The warm reaction from the orchestra, enthusiastic applause from the audience, and an encouraging press review, all those things were the driving force for me to become a professional concert violinist.
In those days, I was sometimes criticized that my sound was not beautiful enough, and some reviewer pointed out that it must be tremendously difficult for a blind person to play the violin properly. Naturally, I was against that idea, and I thought it would be meaningless to carry on playing if I could not overcome this kind of criticism. I wanted to prove that, although the blind people need some extra help to learn the violin and to play music, the performance itself has no difference between a sighted and non- sighted musician. My teacher, a distinguished violinist, Prof. Toshiya Eto, helped me a great deal, and I studied very intensely to produce a nice and powerful sound.
I first came to London in 1967 in the hope of finding the way to make my concert career in this country. To begin with, I tried the B B C audition, but it was not successful. However, I had the opportunity to meet a prominent concert agent who suggested that I should give a debut recital at the Wigmore Hall. She told me that I had to do the recital at my own expense, but the agent was ready to undertake all the publicity work. As it was not enormously expensive, and as it was the only way to start my career in Britain, I decided to give a recital on 7th May 1969. It was a big success, and two main newspapers, the Times and the Daily Telegraph both wrote very highly about my performance. The Daily Telegraph mentioned neither about my nationality nor about my disability, and said "takayoshi Wanami is one of the most talented young violinists of our time." He made a special remark on my tone saying that it has quite an exceptional beauty. Two months after that, I played for the B B C audition again and successfully passed.
Since that time, I have visited England almost every year. In 1970, I won a prize in the Carl Flesch International Competition held in London, and made my broadcast debut at the B B C. The following year I was invited to the Royal Festival Hall to play the Violin Concerto by Bruch as the soloist of the London Mozart Players. At the same time, I was given many important opportunities to play in the continent including Italy, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. In 1974, I made my recital debut in Vienna and also played for the first time in East Germany as the soloist of the distinguished Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
I first met my wife Mineko in 1972 when she came to accompany her colleague who wanted to have a lesson. Her piano playing left a very favourable impression on me, and we decided to study sonatas for violin and piano together. Five years later we got married, and I decided to have a European base in order to continue giving concerts in Europe. First we chose to live in the Swiss city of Basle. It is situated in the middle of western Europe and has easy access to all major cities by railway, and I had a number of very good friends.
We had a very happy and peaceful time in Switzerland, but I became increasingly frustrated by the fact that it was so difficult for us to become part of the Swiss community. I occasionally got important concert engagements, but it was far from enough to make our living. So we made a decision to come to London in 1984, and at the same time began to work in Japan more intensely. As we came to live here, the R N I B and its music advisor Bob Hoare were so friendly and helped a great deal in the process of getting permission to stay in the U K. With their enormous help and our continuous effort, we were given permission to stay indefinitely in this country in 1989.
Unfortunately, my work in this country did not go so well as I had hoped. My intention was to get a teaching position in a music college and to settle down here. But the competition was so hard and, although I was invited to give master classes in different schools and colleges, they did not give me a regular job. On the contrary, I was invited to become a part-time teacher at Toho Music College in Tokyo in 1989. This is the college where I graduated from, and considered as one of the best music schools in Japan particularly for string instrument. I also started an annual summer music master course in Japan, and these duties have been keeping me quite busy beside my concert activity.
In 1995, I was awarded the Suntory Music Award, one of the most prestigious music awards of the Japanese musicians, for my achievement and contribution to the field of western classical music in Japan. In the same year, I gave my fiftieth birthday concert in Tokyo with the string orchestra formed by my students at the college and at my summer master course. It was attended by over 2,000 people and was a wonderfully pleasant and moving occasion for me.
Now I stay about 8 months in a year in Tokyo, but I still keep my home in London and enjoy my time in this country tremendously. As a member of the N F B, I would like to learn more about the blind people's lives here and bring back some of your ideas to Japan. Also it would be a great joy for me if I could contribute to the exchange of ideas and better understanding between our two nations. Nowadays, we are not able to live without thinking about other people. I am very happy to have an international life, and always thankful to music which enables me to enjoy this sort of life.
Recently, Mineko and I gave a recital at St John's, Smith Square in London, and our music was enthusiastically received by the audience. I am so grateful to have warm support in this country. I am planning to give a series of three unaccompanied recitals at the Purcell Room in the South Bank Centre in London in April and May 1998. I do hope that some readers will have the chance to hear my playing sometime in the near future.
(This article was first appeared on the June 1997 edition of "Viewpoint", a bi-monthly magazine published by the National Federation of the Blind. )
|
このページの音声データ・文章・写真等、内容に関する著作権は和波たかよしに帰属します。他のメディアへの無断転載はご遠慮下さい。
|
|
