Midori scores

July 18, 2003 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Midori played Antonin Dvorak's Violin concerto in A minor, Opus 53, in her first Tanglewood appearance since 1994. Having made her debut at age eleven as a surprise guest soloist with the New York Philharmonic, she is celebrating her 20th year as a performing artist (and in May celebrated the 10th year of Midori & Friends, her foundation that provides free music education programs for elementary school children in NYC).

In Marc Mandel's notes on the program, the rondo finale of Antonin Dvorak's violin concerto is described as "unflaggingly energetic" and, quoting Michael Steinberg, "unabashedly Czech." Dvorak wrote the piece in 1879 for Joseph Joachim after hearing him give the first performance of the Brahms violin concerto, but, despite substantial revisions by Dvorak at Joachim's request, he never played it, perhaps because "he may not have been able to reconcile his own conservatism...with respect to Dvorak's bold experimentation..."

It's one of the more wonderful aspects of music that a piece composed by and for a European man in the 19th century can be given a brilliant performance in North America by a Japanese woman in the 21st century.

To play Dvorak's violin concerto, Midori seemingly used every muscle in her body, but the image that remains afterwards shows her still and delicate as a Degas sculpture, freezing for the mind the vision of her drawing the full length of the bow across the strings to produce one long dulcet note.

In the midst of the Boston Symphony Orchstra and in front of the packed Koussevitsky Music Shed, Midori gave free rein to her emotions in playing, as if unaware that anyone was looking at her, and you couldn't take your eyes off her.

There was a moment when she watched a series of notes rise softhly off her violin, as if watching a butterfly flutter away. Another when, while the orchestra came to the end of a passage to be followed by a solo, she flexed her knees in the manner of an NFL cornerback, only to switch quickly to offense and score big with an impressive spiral of notes.

The evening's program also included two works by Stravinsky, Fireworks and Suite from The Firebird, and a 1980 composition by George Benjamin. The latter was presented as part of the 2003 Festival of Contemporary Music, which is under the Musical Direction of tonight's conductor, Robert Spano.

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