The Last Samurai

The Variations for Piano came to an end in six minutes flat and there was a round of applause. Yamamoto walked offstage and it was time for the interval.

I bought Ludo an ice cream and I read the Scottish ballad Edward, which was reprinted in the programme.

The interval came to an end. It was about 9:00.

We walked back into the hall and there was a soft noise as of eight out of ten people laughing softly in quick succession in the audience. There were a lot of things on stage that had not been there before. There were a lot of drums, and a set of hand bells, and two glasses of water on a stand—you couldn’t take in everything all at once. Yamamoto came back onstage to a round of applause and sat down and began to play.

At first I thought he had begun to play Op. 10 No. 1 based on the old Scottish ballad Edward, a piece I had never heard before. I realised after a while that this was not what he was doing. He was playing a couple of bars—maybe five or six chords—over and over. I had no idea whether these featured in Op. 10 No. 1 or not. Sometimes you see a painting where the painter has put paint on the canvas and then scraped almost all of it away; at first he seemed to be scraping the sound away until there was almost nothing there, but even the softest sound on a piano dies away & 9 or 10 times he seemed to bring in a pedal at different stages of this dying so that you heard the other chords over different forms of the first, or he used the sustaining pedal or no pedal at all. It was hard to know what was going on—I thought maybe this phrase did come from Op. 10 No. 1 and you were supposed to see that these were variations, but though in a sense they were variations they were not a piece. This went on for about 20 minutes or half an hour. Then there was a pause, and then he began to do the same thing with a different phrase. This went on for about 20 minutes or half an hour. Then there was a pause, and then he began to play a piece which seemed likely to be Op. 10 No. 1 based on the Scottish ballad Edward, and which did contain the two phrases he had been playing for the last hour. This went on for seven minutes. He stopped and there was a round of applause.

Yamamoto stood up & walked upstage to a drum and struck the drum, and in the aftermath of the soft boom he returned to the piano and sat down and began to play Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor. This went on for five minutes. He stopped and there was a round of applause and a lot of people left.

It was about 10:15. Ludo said Didn’t he play that before and I said Yes and he said Why did he play it again and I said I’ll explain later and somebody laughed and said he’d love to be a fly on the wall. Ludo went back to reading Call of the Wild.

For the next seven and a half hours Yamamoto played Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor, & sometimes he seemed to play it exactly the same five times running but next to the sound of a bell or an electric drill or once even a bagpipe and sometimes he played it one way next to one thing and another way next to another. Some of these sounds were produced at the time and others were recordings, and after six and a half hours he stopped stopping to start the other sounds: a tape began to run & he kept playing. The tape was of traffic and footsteps & people talking and he played Op. 10 No. 1 nine times while it ran, and naturally you could see that you couldn’t really hear how he was playing it or even how he was dealing with the two phrases. At 5:45 the tape came to an end and the piece came to an end and there was silence for 20 seconds or so, and then he played the piece so that you heard it after and over the silence. This went on for six minutes and then he stopped and there was a moment of silence and then he raised his hands to the keys.

You expected to hear Op. 10 No. 1 in D minor for the 60th time, but instead were shocked to hear in quick succession Op. 10 No. 2 in D major, Op. 10 No. 3 in B minor and Op. 10 No. 4 in B major, and you only heard them once each. It was as if after the illusion that you could have a thing 500 ways without giving up one he said No, there is only one chance at life once gone it is gone for good you must seize the moment before it goes, tears were streaming down my face as I heard these three pieces each with just one chance of being heard if there was a mistake then the piece was played just once with a mistake if there was some other way to play the piece you heard what you heard and it was time to go home.

The three pieces were over in about 20 minutes. He took his hands from the keys and the room was absolutely silent.

At last he stood up and bowed and there was a round of applause from the 25 people left in the room. He walked to the centre of the stage and picked up a microphone, and he said:

I think the trains will be running by now. I hope you all get home safely. Thanks for staying.