Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Midori finally back to play, teach kids
Violin superstar Midori played a benefit gala recital for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall in March 1999, performing with pianist Robert McDonald sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, John Corigliano and Johannes Brahms and a showpiece by Maurice Ravel.
It would only be a matter of time, fans reasoned, that she’d be back to play a concerto with the orchestra.
Well, it has been more than a dozen years, but Midori finally is back. She will be playing Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the orchestra Saturday night and the afternoon of April 14 at Robinson.
Except that, considering the schedule she’s keeping this week, the concerto is almost an afterthought.
She’ll spend much of the week working with young area musicians through her Orchestra Residencies Program, which each year plans visits to two cities with orchestra-youth orchestra pairings (the other is the Reading Symphony Orchestra and Youth Orchestra in Reading, Pa.).
Midori spends five to seven days working intensively with the youth orchestras, performing with the “big” symphony orchestras and participating in community education and outreach projects.
Here she’ll meet with young musicians in their schools and work closely with the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra in rehearsals and workshops.
She’ll also be playing the first movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s E major Violin Concerto with their accompaniment, 7:30 p.m. Friday at Robinson. (Tickets to that concert are $10. The program will also include two movements from Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony
No. 8 and a movement from J. S. Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto. Midori will be coaching the young string soloists.)
“The ORP weeks are always packed with activities, but I find them rewarding and inspiring,” she says of the intense schedule she’ll be maintaining during her five-day Arkansas visit. Apparently, at least for her, it will be no more or less hectic than usual.
“Each of the residencies I have done in the past is special. Being around young musicians for hours every day motivates me in many different ways. The activities in Little Rock are unique as they have been designed, for the most part, by a local team of symphony and youth orchestra staff members, and I am happy they will keep me just as busy as I am used to being.”
She doesn’t think it’s the first time that she has played two titanic violin concertos in one weekend.
“It’s a bit difficult for me to remember; it is very possible that I have,” she says. “There are some concerts in which I play two concertos during one performance; there are also others that while on a tour with an orchestra where concerts take place in a different city every day, I may alternate between two different concertos.
“ORP weeks are always full of exciting challenges and the amount of repertoire as well as activities keep me very busy. It is a treat to be able to play these two wonderful concertos in such a short time frame.”
She started studying violin with her mother in Osaka, Japan, when she was 3 and her name was Midori Goto. In 1982 she caught the ear of New York Philharmonic conductor Zubin Mehta, who put her on stage as a surprise guest soloist for the orchestra’s New Year’s Eve concert.
Now 42 and no longer a wunderkind, she has been going by just the one name, like Cher and Madonna, for nearly three decades.
Just before Midori’s 1999 recital appearance in Little Rock, Sony Classics released her 1994 recording of the Tchaikovsky concerto. In the nearly 20 years since she committed that performance to disc, she says, “My approach to the concerto has definitely changed somewhat, but I think that’s true of every piece that I played earlier in my career and which I still play today. One cannot help but to be inspired by new ideas and interpretations through the course of collaborations with many different artists over the years.
“For me, this is one of the most exciting elements of being a performer. Everyone with whom I am fortunate enough to make music shows me something new about the piece that I am playing. The sum of all of those different experiences means that no two performances are ever exactly the same. The piece itself is always changing, and I love that.
“Tchaikovsky’s concerto is deservedly one of the standards of solo violin repertoire. No matter how many times I hear it or perform it, I am always moved by the passion and bravura of the piece. It has moments of exquisite beauty and moments of dazzling brilliance. Though my interpretation of small details in the piece may have changed over the years, I think that I will always have a great appreciation for the mastery of the writing itself.”