Ryuichi Sakamoto – Opus

Venue:

Playhouse – Sydney Opera House

Date: 04/05/2024

This is a special, beautiful film. Directed by Sakamoto’s son, it was made a few months before his death from cancer in November 2023.

Over an hour and a half he plays a selection of his music on piano, a 9′ Yamaha grand in a huge studio that looks like a sound stage. Umpteen microphones, some the size of thermos flasks. It’s beautifully lit, and the camera is intimate but unobtrusive.

Most of the music he plays is slow-medium tempo, the left hand playing chords and the right hand playing melodies, but that’s such a superficial description, and I’m a bloody piano player! Just go and see it. It’s mesmerising, beautiful, and there are so many unexpected turns, harmonically and melodically.

He has a very graceful way of lifting his hands from the piano at the end of a piece.

There are a couple of moments where he stops and starts again, and and at one point he says something like “I’m pushing myself”. Not surprisng. He looks gaunt and fragile, but there are lovely moments when he smiles and is obviously really delighted with what he’s played.

Like I said, go and see it.

The audience:

Full house, reverent, applauded at the end

It made me think..

This is a beautiful way to record a solo piano concert

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