By MARK SWED

With pianist Charles Abramovic as her impressive partner, Midori began [her New Music Recital] with "Coruscation and Reflection." The title well enough describes the short, richly textured but otherwise thin piece by a young Welsh composer, Huw Watkins.

That was followed by Brett Dean's "Berlin Music," written for Midori last year. It is a suite of attractive, short character pieces by an Australian violist who spent many years in the Berlin Philharmonic.[...]

Neither of these pieces fully showed off what Midori can do, but the stunning Hosokawa piece, after intermission, made up for that. The score is abstract and exotic. Violin attacks are sharp, sudden and often on more than one string. The piano complements with shards of intense bright sound.

Midori proved a study in concentration. She has always been known for her accuracy of pitch, clarity of tone and care with rhythm. She is intense and forceful but never showy. I know of no violinist with a more sensitive nor respectful sense of vibrato, which allows her to let every note speak and none to over-speak. Thanks to Abramovic adding his own percussive and brilliant tone to the mix, the "Vertical Time Study" became a hypnotizing meditation on fire and ice.

The last two pieces were James MacMillan's "After the Tryst," a gorgeous riff on a Scottish ballad, and John Adams' "Road Movies," his 1995 violin sonata.

This was essential Adams. To hear both Midori and Abramovic play the Minimalist first movement, titled "Relaxed Groove," without relaxation but with provocative pinpoint precision was a revelation. They did take "Meditation," the second movement, at its word, allowing all that is unessential in musical expression to leave the room.[...]

This new, modern Midori is a great gift to new music.[...]