The New York Times, 27 April, 2006

Taking Chances, in the Service of Contemporary Works

By ALLAN KOZINN

With Robert McDonald at the piano, Midori played five works composed from 1979 to 2000 by top-drawer composers whose styles shared a slightly acerbic view of tonality, but also an impulse toward lyricism or even, at least fleetingly, outright Romanticism.

She began with Judith Weir's "Music for 247 Strings" (1981), a set of 10 aphoristic pieces. ... Midori and Mr. McDonald gave them the wit, precision and cohesiveness they demand and made the best of them dance off the page. ... Midori followed Ms. Weir's piece with Isang Yun's Sonata (1991), an extraordinary score ... Midori played the work with irresistible warmth and intensity. The attractions of Alexander Goehr's three-movement Suite (2000) are the interplay between the violin and the piano, and the lyricism of its central movement ... More immediately involving was Gyorgy Kurtag's "Tre Pezzi" (1979), a work that barely rises above a whisper in its outer movements. Midori and Mr. McDonald closed their program with a rich-hued and suitably intense account of a contemporary classic, Lutoslawski's dramatic Partita (1984).