Tagesspiegel, 27 November 2003

Oyster Catchers and a Pearl among Violinists
By CARSTEN NIEMANN

Comparisons with pearls are usually made with another quite different venue in Berlin. But now and again, the Philharmonic's Chamber Music Hall can also boast the occasional pearl. Midori, for example, the Japanese violinist, who plays so exquisitely she can do without her surname - just as Guarneri (whose instrument she plays) renounced his first name. Pearls, as we know, evolve from tiny impurities. And frequently, artistic perfectionists also owe their brilliance to a struggle with some minor imperfection: not big enough to mar the overall impression, yet palpable enough to lend them character.

In Midori's case, such imperfections or irregularities are, to be sure, extremely difficult to detect. Is this 31-year-old perhaps still in essence a child prodigy? Her most profound moments, in any case, were achieved in the parts of compositions that resisted such flawlessness. From the less palatable young Hindemith's Sonata in E flat major, for example, she wrested many a beautiful passage without making him sound kitsch in the process. And even more stirring than the emotional outbursts of a Brahms' sonata was the remarkably accomplished final movement of Camille Saint-Saëns's Sonata in D minor. Indeed, Midori and her accompanist Charles Abramovic lavished us with one wondrously effervescent run after the next. A tightrope act - across abysses, mastered in the most exquisite piano. And where others start to flounder, Midori's music is obviously only just beginning.