MIDORI---AN ARTIST OF COMMITMENT AND COUNTLESS FACETS
                Her Intensive Encompasses Young Talent, New Music, and Instruction
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Feb. 7-14, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 59
            There is yet another kind of change you can believe in: A major concert artist giving up a wealth of potential income by contemporary-music performance and in-school appearances.
            It would be easy---and lucrative—for Midori to give a large-scale Davies Hall recital of Beethoven and Brahms, cash in the chips, and move on to the next opportunity. Instead, she gives an intimate violin recital of living composers in Herbst Theatre, and spends the rest of the week devoting her energies to music education (for more on that, see Part Two, see below). And she managed to draw a full house---no mean feat, given such less familiar repertory.
            You may see some younger artist essay this in trying to build a career. But a mature superstar like this hyperactive 38-year-old from Japan?
            Artists of such caliber are rare, and worth their weight in gold.
            She also happens to be an extremely talented performer, a prime technician who can pretty much make the violin sit up and beg. There are other violinists who play so vehemently that you fear they’ll break the violin into pieces. My fear with Midori, given her delicate, petite, fragile frame, is that the violin might break her into shards long before.
            But there were no such worries at her Feb. 6 concert at Herbst, where the biggest concern was a loud audio hum which, after considerable audience nervousness, wandering and exploration, her pianist was able to quell in backstage maneuvers.  The only true crowd-pleaser on the whole menu was her finale, “Road Movies” (1995) by Berkeley’s John Adams, another clever fast-moving vehicle by the master of evolved minimalism.
            Quite apart from the motoristic drive, with distant reminiscence of the baroque, Adams will use a growing-theme technique: A few notes, then repeats with a few more, ever greater, ever faster, with the piano providing punctuation throughout, all in a very tonal, consonant way. In the finale, blue-grass touches sweep over Adams’ score, with broad sound swoops and rapid fiddling---a fun experience, except for the serious mien of Midori, ever twitching on the accents  giving it her angular body English, serious to a fault, turning on her high-intensity gaze as if absorbed in some massive romantic concerto in a minor key.
            Adams, who turns 53 later this month, in his uniquely disarming manner hopped up on stage to congratulate the artist and share the applause.
            Few of the works got beyond the technically-formidable stage. A notable exception was Penderecki’s 36-minute, five-movement Sonata No. 2, generous in dimension, abundant in contrast. The silky Nocturne middle movement  is one of the most beautiful and most moving modern pieces I’ve heard. And lest you think Penderecki is galloping back toward the past, pianist Charles Abramovic was making an avant-gardish impact not long after by thrusting his whole right forearm onto the keyboard, close to two octaves’ worth of sound. Pizzicatos resonate throughout the score, often with great delicacy. The only flaw comes in the second movement, where the composer veers perilously close to the idiom of Dmitri Shostakovich in the nebulous tonality.
            Elsewhere, there were sinewy, technically dazzling pieces by the Welshman Huw Watkins and the Japanese Toshio Hosokawa, played dutifully by a tireless Midori, who seemingly can perform any task put on her music stand.  
            She was making a point about internationalism: Five composers, five national identities, three continents.
            In the few moments of true continuity, pianist Abramovic showed he could make lines sing as a true partner in the duo. But most of the night, the piano was relegated to uninteresting punctuation, time-keeping  and percussion.
            The concert was given under auspices of San Francisco Performances. (Above text appended Feb. 7.)
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           Is the stellar violinist Midori setting a new standard for versatility?
            Let’s rephrase it. Have you ever encountered star artists doing more than master classes and concert performances?
            For Midori those are mere departure points. She had approached S.F. Performances’ Ruth Felt some five years ago  to do an all-day event, built around contemporary music.
            The result was her exhausting but unique moderns-cum-education intensive unreeled over nearly nine hours at the S.F. Conservatory of Music Jan. 31. She gave a master class for young violinists playing contemporary selections, sandwiched in a couple of notable composers’ panels, and tacked on a performance session for violists as well, doing more fresh-ink music. She finished up playing excerpts of her modern program scheduled for a week later, and then---around the time that lesser folk would have doffed shoes and propped up feet in the hotel---stood around greeting the fans, neophytes and musicians during a reception.
            So there was a multiple thrust: nurturing young musical talent, promoting living composers, and exposing a wide audience to the sounds of today (and not just the sounds of Midori). Given the participation of symphonic stars like John Adams and Mason Bates on  panels, plus the indisputable drawing power of the petite Japanese violin virtuoso, and you had a unique stellar event to move the immovable object---the distressingly conservative commercial medium of concertizing---into the new millennium.
            And there was recognition of many others, among them conservatory composers who produced pieces for the occasion. Pity that the hall was not jammed the entire day. But in a future reprise, better publicity and word-of-mouth could fill the gaps.
            In her excerpts, she moved her audience in the conservatory concert hall not only with Penderecki’s Sonata No. 2 (1999), but also with an unaccompanied Bach movement of nearly three centuries earlier.
            As Midori puts it simply, it’s all valid. “Music history is a cycle, or circle.” What goes around, comes around.
            Midori, violin, in recital Feb. 6 at Herbst Theatre, S.F., with music of Watkins, Penderecki, Hosokawa, Adams, MacMillan. For info: (415) 677-0325, or go online.
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010

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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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