"Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life."

Jean Paul Richter (1763 - 1825)

The Sound of Steinway

One Saturday morning, the telephone rang when I was "plowing" the "Revolutionary" study. The voice of a Japanese friend of mine was heard in the receiver. She told me she just heard about a café & art gallery in Ginza, where one can hold a solo show of paintings at no charge.

Ginza is the name of the most luxurious commercial center in Tokyo, also known as the place with highest price of land in the world. Many brand-name companies like Gucci, Chanel, Misukoshi, Shiseido, etc. have their front stores in Ginza. Comparing Ginza with Boulevard des Champs Elysees of Paris or Manhattan of New York would be no exaggeration.

There are around 450 art galleries in this area. Art galleries in Japan are classified in two categories called kikaku garo and kashi garo. A kikaku garo literally means a gallery, where the shows are planned by gallery's owner usually based on the recommendation by an art curator or professor(s) of some well-known art universities such as Tokyo Ghedai (Tokyo Art University). The artists, who are selected for the shows, do not have to pay the rent for the gallery, but the gallery takes a high commission from the sale of the works usually 50 - 70 % ofthe retailed price (!) A kashi garo means a rental gallery. Anybody can hold the show here after paying a rent, which isusually 300 - 500 USD per day in Ginza area. No commission of sold works is paid to the gallery. Despite the high rent, all the kashi garos in Ginza are usually booked up for two years ahead. The sole interest of the owners of both types of galleries is the profit, not the artistic value or novelty of artistic creation by the artists.

In a society where the interest in art ranks last of the list of interests among women (a recent statistic report shows that only 19% of Japanese women are interested in art compared to 47% interested in shopping), while men reportedly have no interest at all in art, the business of art galleries is rather sluggish. People including art collectors buy art based on recommendations rather than on their own taste. This situation gave birth to a class of quite snobby gallery owners. Therefore, it is really good news that there is a café & art gallery in Ginza, which does not even charge artists. At least it is worth to see this place, I thought.

As a matter of fact, an art café in Tokyo is not a rarity. I had visited several such cafés. However, what I saw there was a curtain of cigarette smoke as dense as the fog on Thames in the famous painting byClaude Monet[1], no good at all for paintings as well as the health of a non-smoking painter like me. Dipped in the smoke are the hairy heads and faces of customers, who were busy in talking or surfing the Internet. No one paid a little attention on what was being hung over the walls.

o O o

Café Kenya - the name of the café & gallery, which my friend just recommended - has changed my opinion. The most interesting thing was that, after I came there, I found that it is located on B2 floor of the tall building of the Asahi Life Insurance Company. On the B1 floor is located the famous piano showroom called Steinway Salon Tokyo. Steinway & Sons is the name of the world number-one piano manufacturer, which was founded more than 150 years ago in New York. The rich sound of the Steinway grand piano and the velvet feeling when touching its keyboard are matchless. Comparing a Steinway with a Yamaha is similar to comparing a Mercedes with a Toyota. In this respect the renown skill in imitation of Japanese seems to have a limit.

As an amateur piano player, I often dream of buying a Steinway grand when I get rich to replace my Yamaha GranTouch, which I currently play at home (The bottom price of a brand-new Steinway grand in Tokyo is around 60,000 USD).

This showroom also has three studios. Studio A is in fact a concert hall with 88 seats and two Steinway concert grands D-274 on the stage, the queens of all concert grand pianos. Studio B is a 17.5 m2 room with two Steinway grands D-274 and a sufficient space for around 7 - 8 listeners seating just behind the player. Studio C is 12.5 m2 large and has one Steinway grand D-274. Therefore, after realizing that the showroom is just one floor above café Kenya, I quietly gave a big plus to the café.

Though rather small, café Kenya is a quite charming and cozy place with swallow niches in the walls for paintings or art objects. The café's master is an aged bonhomme, who said that he liked paintings hung onthe walls to make his guests feel more comfortable and relaxed when sippinghis African coffee. This is the reason why he does not charge artists toshow their works here. "The major part of my customers comes from musicians and audience, who join the concerts upstairs. So the clientele of the café is exclusively intellectual." - he said. Each show usually lasts for twoweeks here, which is about twice longer as compared to those held at theexpensive galleries mentioned above.

My concern of cigarette smoke was also scattered after learning that the major part of guests coming here do not smoke in the café. Moreover, the Chuo ward, where this building is located, is one of few wards in Tokyo, where the anti-smoking campaign is in full swing. Violation will cost you 20,000 yen (around 200 USD). Usually it took time for me to think over before making the final decision. However, this time, these pluses broke my rule. I signed immediately on the spot a formal agreement with the master to hold my solo show at café Kenya from February 28 to March 13, 2004.

Fifteen years ago, when I started my own style in a surrealistic manner, I also painted a series of small-size works (up to 40 x 50 cm). In these experiments color, composition, contrast, thickness and rhythm of brushstrokes and knife-strokes, etc. are the most important elements to create the harmony of the painting and express the emotion of the artist. The paintings in such a ¦childish² style were in factshort studies in between lengthy surrealistic compositions, which took me months. In 1991 I showed 40 paintings in this style together with 30 realistic and surrealistic works at my solo show at the exhibition hall of the Vietnam Fine Art Association in Hanoi. This time, I thought this style could be suitable for the ambience of a café, where people come to relax, rather than to break their heads in front of enigmatic surrealistic compositions. Apart from that, I also wanted to show some of my nude drawings, which I made at a studio in Tokyo.

There are many such studios in the downtown. The models - all of them are young women - are introduced by representative companies. In the last two years I have drawn more than one hundred of such sketches using charcoal pencil, sanguine, and pen. Line is all which creates the beauty of such a drawing. During the short breaks between drawing sªances, the members of drawing club used to walk around to look at drawings of each other. They used to ask me to put my sketches on a chair or easel for people to look at, and sprinkled them with praises. Some said that the line was so beautiful. Others noticed that though I used a pen - the most difficult drawing device to handle as mistakes cannot be corrected - I still could make precise lines. I only politely ... smiled. About twenty five years ago, when I was a student of the Department of physics of Moscow State University, I joined a drawing club in Moscow, where an art professor of the art college named after Stroganov worked as an instructor. One evening we drew a Venus head. Looking at my sketch, the professor said that I produced "singing lines" which made "the head alive although it is a statue". This was the highest praise I ever received so far.

After measuring the sizes of the walls of the café, I planned to show 7 oil paintings and 5 nude drawings. I also displayed the collection of 28 surrealistic oil paintings of mine, which was recently published as a book entitled "The joy of imagination". After I informed my Japanese friends about this show, they proposed to hold a small opening party.

Knowing my "weak point" every time I see a grand piano, they also contacted Steinway Salon Tokyo upstairs and got an agreement from the salon that I would give a small performance on a Steinway grand in the salon on the opening day. The e-mail message, which I got from my friends, read: "Nocturne or Revolutionary please. It's a Steinway." Lovers of Chopin's music can easily decode this mobile-phone's message, namely: "Please play Nocturne No. 20 or Study No. 12 Opus 10 (Revolutionary). This is a good chance to play a Steinway grand piano."

Nocturne No. 20 C sharp minor became fashionable in Tokyo after the movie "The pianist" by Roman Polansky was shown and won the Oscar. Revolutionary study is one of the most famous works by Chopin. The twenty-one year old Chopin wrote this piece on his way from Poland to France in 1831. In Stuttgart he learned the news that Warsaw had fallen to Russian invaders. Pain and passion had inspired him to write this study, which is one of the most dramatic expressions of patriotic pride, defiance and rage in music. The left-hand party roars up and down the bass of the piano creating ananimated background of "mysterious and terrible force", on which impassioned, sharply rhythmic motives played by the right hand "cry out in revolt" as described by Alfred Cortot[2].

o O o

The opening of "Color and Line" - the name I called my solo show - took place smoothly, although I was not yet satisfied with my piano playing. My son, who has been learning the piano playing for nine years, told me after the performance: "Dad, you made at least five mistakes. You played much better when you practiced at home." My wife was generous, who said: "I think it was alright since dad went through all the pieces without a jam!" However, the audience was surprised because most of my Japanese friends did not know that I also play the piano apart from being a physicist and a painter, therefore they probably forgave my mistakes.

Japanese people quite often appreciate efforts more than results. However, to me art and music are those areas, where perspiration cannot replace inspiration. The piano prodigy Evgeni Kissin[3] once said: "If a pianist practices more than four hours per day then there are only two possibilities: or he has no talent, or he has nothing else to do." OneJapanese friend of mine said: "The spirit and emotional intensity when playing Chopin are the most important things, and you were able to express them in your performance. This was what really counted." This comment encouraged me. Beside I have a couple of reasons to blame on. The first reason was that, just before the performance, I was busy hanging the paintings, hitting nails with a hammer. After that I accidentally washed my hands with cold water, which froze my fingers. The second reason was that I was not in the "organizing committee", which consisted of my friends. Therefore I was kind of hurry and nervous when coming in the piano showroom, forgetting to remove my watch, my wallet, and counting up to 30 before playing the first note. These are my rituals to calm down to get rid of the stage fear, in which I learned the counting trick from Sviatoslav Richter[4] after seeing the movie "The enigma" of Bruno Monsaingeon. Finally, I told myself that, although I practiced everyday for one to two hours, who can avoid making any mistake when playing in public? Even such a talent like Yundi Li[5] also banged a couple of wrong notes at the Chopin competition. These reasons pushed me to a "revenging" performance.

Knowing that my wife and some of her Japanese friends would visit my painting exhibition during the week, I decided to give a second performance. This time I made a careful arrangement, concentrating my mind solely on my piano performance. I called to the Steinway Salon and reserved studio B for one hour so that I had sufficient time to get use to the new instrument before the performance.

The sound of the Steinway concert grand D-274 was so wonderful that all my attempts to describe it by words would be meaningless. However, the following quote from Martha Argerich[6] probably fits my case well. She said: "Sometimes a Steinway plays better than the pianist, and it is then a marvelous surprise." I played four pieces by Chopin, namely Nocturne No. 1 Op. 9 B flat minor, Mazurka No. 4 Op. 33 B minor, Revolutionary Study, and Nocturne No. 20 C sharp minor, with about 80% of the best I could produce when practicing at home. Adding to this the beautiful sound of the Steinway, I considered this performance a successful one. Leaving the showroom and guiding the guests downstairs to the café,I met the café's master, who announced cheerfully: "I just sold one more copy of your book." This was not a big amount. But the satisfaction is something, which cannot be measured by money.

It rained on my way back home. The Tokyo's sky turned gray and low. However, when you are in a good mood, even a dull day becomes a delightful scenery. I dropped by a music shop near my home and bought a new CD, which I had been waiting for. Coming home, I inserted the CD into the player. The room was suddenly filled with the dramatic accords from Chopin's Revolutionary Study played by the legendary Vladimir Horowitz[7], recorded in 1972 at Carnegie Hall when he was 69 years old. His phrasing brought goose bumps to the flesh. Horowitz was born in 1903 in Kiev. In 1928 he left Russia and came to the United States. His first visit home took place only in 1986 after more than a half century. At a press conferenceduring this historical visit, which attracted the attention of the whole international music world, some journalist mentioned that "Horowitz was part of the Russian school". Horowitz reacted immediately: "What school? No I am of no school; my school is the Horowitz school"[8].

o O o

One Saturday morning I visited the solo show of my old friend, who is a photographer. The show took place in one ofthe most luxurious restaurants in Tokyo, which is located on the 47^th floor of a well-known advertising company. My friend introduced me to the restaurant's manager, a handsome Italian. The young man opened the book ofmy paintings "The Joy of Imagination" and said: "Wow! This is what I really like!" A project of holding my solo show here was quickly sketched out. I like the spacious atmosphere of this restaurant with tall walls full of light. From this restaurant one can see the splendid view of the Tokyo bay with such a feeling that one is standing on the top of the world. However what is still missing in this luxurious hotel is probably a Steinway grand piano.

Nguyen Dinh Dang

This English version was written on March 16, 2004

© Copyright by Nguyen Dinh Dang