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Opening her program with Mozart’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in E-flat major, K. 380, Midori and Özgür Aydin displayed well-coordinated ensemble playing despite some significant balance issues. The opening Allegro movement of the Mozart was the worst offender. With the lid of the Folly’s Hamburg Steinway at full stick and not a single moment of una corda pedal, this sounded more like a sonata for piano with violin obbligato that the delicate interweaving textures of the violin part just weren’t able to overcome.

Balance improved in the second movement, partially due to a more stratified texture, and the players themselves settled into the piece. Midori was much more engaging, offering plenty of passionate physical expression with bent posture and tip-toe moments to accompany lovely graceful phrasing.

The piece picked up yet more energy in the third movement, though balance remained an issue in spots. The humor and conversational style between the violin and piano parts of the Rondeau came across well.

Arguably the most moving and best performed piece on the program, Shostakovich’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 134, was not light-hearted fare. Rather it was like an existential play, wherein two characters in a sparsely dressed set examine their own eternity. In the opening slow movement, the violin’s passionate lines were set against the stoicism of the piano. Midori displayed an impressive palette of tone color changes in a sinuous opening, from timid and tenuous, to strong and bright, to gravelly darkness. The double-stop passage just after the opening gesture was equally enthralling and virtuosic. Later, a pizzicato episode was supremely crisp and an amazing journey of character development for both the violin and piano.

The rollicking danse macabre of the inner Allegretto movement opened with bell-like piano licks and thundering bass tones, against which Midori offered sharply accented frog passages and painfully sharp-looking pizzicato chords. There was no difficulty hearing the violin here and it was an impressive display. A few sul G moments followed where Midori elicited growling Hendrix guitar sounds from her 1734 Guanerius del Gesu violin.

The slow-paced third movement found Midori pulling disparate pitches out of her instrument with ease in a striking opening. A stark, sparsely accompanied pizzicato soliloquy was spellbinding and provided a perfect trajectory through the later wispy moments. The audience, which began the half-hour sonata seeming a bit squirmy, was captivated by the end of the performance.

Midori and Aydin retook the stage in the second half to offer a pairing of Schumann and Schubert works. Both were well played and sensitively paced, though the formulaic Romantic works felt mundane coming on the heels of a weighty and lengthy Shostakovich offering.

In the Schumann Sonata in A minor, Op. 105, Midori offered another rich color display in the first movement. Aydin’s piano work continued to improve throughout the performance with a well-balanced undulating texture supporting the violin. The second movement displayed more long, sonorous phrasing amid a few intonation gaffs. The third movementm with streams of 16th notes, gave way to a swirling start of the theme in conversational entrances between the pair.

Schubert’s Fantasie in C major, D. 934, saw more Romantic swelling textures with a strikingly clean high harmonic in the violin part. A lovely pastoral dance section was well played by both. It later returned as an enthralling, joyous, soaring bucolic melody.

Midori offered two encores, both significantly more technically showy than her recital repertoire. The first was a lovely, glitzy waltz by Wieniawski with sparkling harmonics. The second was Carl Engel’s Sea-shell, originally for voice and piano, in an arrangement by Efrem Zimbalist. 

REVIEW:
Harriman-Jewell Series
Midori
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Folly Theatre
300 W. 12^th St., Kansas City, MO
For more information, visit http://www.hjseries.org

Top Photo: Midori  

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.