Cape Cod Times, August 2, 2004

Midori defines the virtuoso
By ANNA CREBO

Midori is a violinist for our time.

She plays with a passion and poignancy that bespeak the pervasive sense of angst combined with unparalleled technological brilliance that characterizes our age. Like a fastidious, caring surgeon, she cuts to the essence of each phrase, each motive, and exposes its meaning - lovingly and with consummate skill.

The much-admired former prodigy does not use tonal color simply for color's sake, nor does she regularly employ a lushly sonorous tone, although these and every other conceivable effect are at her fingertips, so to speak. ...

At the violinist's sold-out performance Friday night in Mashpee High School auditorium, the motionless audience seemed to be hanging on every note as though they were listening to the clarion call of a lark after a cataclysmic storm, because that is how Midori played. Each note and every musical nuance counted.

Vibrant bird calls and a fierce summer storm figured prominently in Antonio Vivaldi's "Spring" and "Summer" concertos from the early Baroque Italian master's "The Four Seasons." Midori was soloist in all four concertos ... elegantly supported by the Boston-based Borromeo String Quartet, harpsichordist Peter Sykes and French-born bassist Pascale Delache-Feldman. ...

On the second half, Midori, assisted by pianist Peter Vinograde, played a challenging and substantive recital that displayed the wide range of her musical tastes and her seemingly unlimited technical abilities.