Los Angeles Times, 1 November, 2005

A generous violinist, especially in performance
Known for outreach, Midori makes artful use of her gifts, channeling the spirit of composers.
By ADAM BAER

After more than 20 years onstage,[Midori] isn't just her generation's most giving, selfless musical figure, continually spawning successful outreach programs and teaching on both coasts .... She is also among its most generous performers, a fact that her recital Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall with pianist Charles Abramovic confirmed yet again.

Midori throws herself into scores without ego, shaping informed but freeing interpretations that extract the pure spirit of composers. ...

[Midori's lustrous tone, her control over bow pressure, dynamics and articulation, and her interpretive curiosity were] immediately evident ... in her lively, intimate reading of Mozart's A-major Sonata, K. 305, a long-lined interpretation made of small improvisatory moments that added playfulness and daring agility.

Then, in ... Prokofiev's [violin sonata in F minor] she dug deeper, channeling a composer's haunting qualities, giving the silence between notes peculiar drama before exhaling series of high, muted scales and hurling herself into stab attacks. Most memorable was her ability to create a memory space — to paint images of barren fields in the work's nostalgic third movement and let vocal phrases breathe. These sounds may have lacked the size, weight and folksy authenticity of older, throatier Russian performers, but in her wistful tempo changes toward the end, she found Prokofiev's anxiety.

Midori then offered Schoenberg's Phantasy, a high-modern collection of erratic tone and articulation changes she pulled off —- shifting on a dime from gliding artificial harmonics to stark declarations — as naturally as any 12-tone composer could desire. Hearing it was like listening to a midcentury architect speak passionately of his angles.

The recital's closer, Beethoven's C-minor Sonata, attained quiet mystery as chamber-style motives played with compact focus — tidy, subtle lines — moved toward crises with undertones of suspense.