San Francisco Chronicle, 29 April, 2006

Contemporary music on menu, and Midori shows her mastery

By JOSHUA KOSMAN

Midori has already established herself as one of the most important violinists of our time, a fierce and sensitive interpreter of the standard repertoire. But with her superb recital in Herbst Theatre on Thursday night -- a demanding and exhilarating program of music from the past quarter-century -- she raised her stature even higher.

This was more than simply an evening packed full of exciting music brilliantly played -- though it was certainly that. It was also a demonstration of how an artist of the first rank goes about expanding her musical worldview.

There was nothing either grudging or pro forma about Midori's reincarnation as a new-music performer. Her program ... offered a consistent stylistic thread, and she performed it all with the same intelligence and rhythmic gusto that she brings to more familiar fare.

The effect was to make a case for the continuity of music history, and to demonstrate that the same skills that a great performer brings to Brahms can be applied equally well to the music of Witold Lutoslawski or Isang Yun. ...

Through it all, Midori and [Robert] McDonald contrived to bring out both the spirit of adventure in the music and its rhetorical clarity, so that a listener was always aware of hearing something new but comprehensible -- which, in the end, is what it's all about.

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/29/DDGVAIGU0N1.DTL&hw=Midori&sn=001&sc=1000