[Numbers 966] Shinya Kiyozuka on Yuzuru Hanyu
[Talent praised by the pianist]
[I become the athlete, and he became the musician]
This year’s June, at Fantasy on Ice Ice Show, Hanyu Yuzuru charmed the audience with a beautiful live performance “Haru yo, Koi” (Come, Spring). Inthis article, the pianist who collaborated with him for the 1sttime, reflectson their process of building the program together (literal: their “2-people-3 leg”), and memory from the stage.
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Hanyu-senshu had listened to “Haru yo, Koi” in my album “Kiyozuka”, so we collaborated for Faoi 2018. After that, I received request for length of the song and something like “I want to create this type of story” from him. Then, I arranged the piece one more time, and we kept exchanging frequently, so that was as if we arranged the piece together. Until that point, he had been closely involved, and since I’m not good at dealing with people who leaves everything for me to decide, I’m very happy.
Hanyu-senshu has sharp analysis ability. He understands a lot, from how to express through facial expression, and gestures, to what the accompanying emotion should be. Those things seem to come very naturally to him, but that’s also who Hanyu-senshu truly is.
Collaboration between live music performance and figure skating is truly difficult. For figure skating is a sport, it’s compulsory that jumps must be landed, which is not the ideal condition for giving oneself to the music. That’s what I felt most strongly about when doing collaboration. I collaborated with them for the sake of art, but well, sport is still sport. That was (Faoi) a collaboration between sports and music, but since that time was a live performance, I knew I could not play like the other times. Certainly, I would have to adjust here and there. However, in the rehearsal, even there was displacement within only 1 second, Hanyu-senshu would point out “Kiyozuka-san, just now, I think (the music was) about 1 second late”- that kind of situation.
Nevertheless, the amazing thing is that Hanyu-senshu never told me to redo that 1-second-late displacement. Fluctuation is the real thrill of live performance. Probably, among all programs, ours was the longest rehearsal. He learned to grasp my music, while I learned to grasp his skating, for the sake of a mutual creation. We were trying to understand each other’s “person”. Speaking of music, it will become wonderful if there’s variation in intensity. The tempo fluctuates. It can be fast or slow, intense or faint. If there’s variation, there’ll be different emotions. However, if there’s more variation, timing will change more frequently and subsequently, it’ll be more difficult to match the music. That’s why when I understand myself and Hanyu-senshu’s “person”, this could be made up for,*and I never want to change this.*(not sure if I get this part right…)
That goes with Hanyu-senshu, too. In ice shows, we, artists and sound technicians were checking musical instruments and testing sound system, athletes would be eating, having massage. Basically, we did separate things in our own time. Nevertheless, only Hanyu-senshu, would definitely be somewhere in the rink, listening to us during sound-check, and maybe dancing at the same time. We were given hints, though few.
Also, there was also an occasion when Oda (Nobunari)-kun asked me to play his favorite song, “Baby, God bless you”, from the drama “Kounodori”(Kiyozuka-san also contributed in theme music for this drama), and I played it in one of the rehearsals. In that moment, Hanyu-senshu improvised choreography, and danced alone a little bit. From here, the show started. Straightaway. Another thing is that, the piece was quite long (about 5 mins), but I could probably say that he carried on dancing until the very end. However, when I finished playing, I said “Oda-kun, I’m so sorry, but I need to speak to Hanyu-kun.” (laugh). Hanyu-kun also laughed, as if to say “I’m so sorry for my own flow of choreography”, then ran away after dropping me this exclamation: “Kiyozuka-san, I have understood the “soul” (literal: breath) of your music”. I thought “Ah….That’s how he is”.
Although we use the same piece of “Haru yo, Koi” in all stops, every performance gave off a different impression, and a commonly asked question is that “How did we manage to catch up?”. Nonetheless, if right from the beginning, he had requested my piano to “match his own movement”, I would have refused. Only because we focused together with all our strength, and tried to understand each other earnestly, were we able to create a miracle. In his last spin combination, I had to play between 3 octave scales, and I did 3 times of glissando. In that moment, it was very hard to make eye-contact, but I still needed (to look) and feel the speed, intensity, duration of his spins, his own “glissando”, so that the performance could be perfect. That’s the 1sttime I’ve played the role of the musician in a position (literal: session) that wasn’t for musician. For just an instance, I became the athlete, and he became a musician.
We only shook hands in the last day, after everything was over. It was me who asked to shake hands, but in that moment, I could feel a sense of “incompatibility”. Hanyu-senshu’s ice and my stage are 2 separate worlds. In the situation when 2 people in 2 different worlds can understand one another, they somehow manage to cross over the wall, but they would still realize the difference. (literal: say: “Maybe different”). Therefore, I didn’t ask for handshake in the first place, and I think Hanyu-senshu would sympathize. "The door to the place where you can never reach will be opened for only a moment", they say, and for me this collaboration was unique.
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