Performing Arts : Music & Dance News : The Return of the Prodigy : After a four-month medical break, violinist Midori is back on stage, back in school andback in the business of being a concert star.

No longer a prodigy, Midori can still startle.

The 23-year-old violinist surprised the musical world in September by suddenly retreating from public performances. She canceled a week’s worth of concerts with the New York Philharmonic, announcing she was taking four months off, due to what a Philharmonic spokesman called a “digestive disorder.”

It was the first time she had dropped so completely out of circulation since her surprise debut, at the age of 10, with the New York Philharmonic.

Last fall, reports surfaced that she was actually suffering from an eating disorder, which again brought up questions of the appropriate care and handling of child stars, whether they are tennis or string players. For her part, Midori had no comment.

Then, as promised, the 5-foot-1 violinist returned to the stage in January, embarking on the first segment of her 1995 European tour and playing in New York and Detroit, among other places.

At that time, one New York critic answered the question Midori’s followers must have wanted to ask. He wrote: “Rumors suggesting her career had suffered a setback appeared to be entirely unfounded; the violinist achieved the same impressive balance of string-searing forcefulness and elegant poise to which audiences have been accustomed throughout her career.”

Now, she is on a monthlong U.S. recital tour that brings her to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Tuesday and to San Diego Civic Theatre on Thursday, with her longtime pianistic partner, Robert McDonald.

On the phone from her home in New York, one recent midnight, Midori described herself as “feeling strong” and looking forward enthusiastically to her national tour. She remained quietly emphatic when asked about that recent hiatus--she doesn’t want to talk about it.

“It was a medical problem,” she said, “and medical problems are very personal.”

What she does want to talk about are the good works being done by her Manhattan-based foundation, Midori & Friends, which she created three years ago to bring music to schoolchildren.

The foundation--she spends, she says, part of every year in fund-raising for it--now operates on an annual budget of $500,000 and will sponsor five performances at each of 21 New York City elementary and junior-high schools this year. The performers include Midori herself, pianist Emanuel Ax, a string quartet and a jazz sextet, among others.

The schools also receive videotapes, cassettes and workbooks to help spread the message of music. Another important aspect of the program, Midori says, “is that, at each school, the students keep journals about their musical experiences.” This is all part of the violinist’s original concept of the foundation, “to inspire children through music.”

Inspiration for the young fiddler, who came to this country from Japan, accompanied by her mother, to study with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School in New York in 1981, always has seemed to be abundant.

Her debut with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic later that year, and subsequent steady if infrequent orchestral appearances around the United States--including a West Coast debut, with the Pasadena Symphony, in 1986--created a stir perhaps unlike any comparable event since the advent of 7-year-old Yehudi Menuhin in the mid-1920s. What both critics and music-lovers noticed first in the teen-age Midori’s playing was its beyond-her-years virtuosity, its effortlessness and extreme musicality--from the first, like Menuhin, she seemed always to communicate.

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Inevitably, of course, there was talk about what she had to sacrifice to pursue her talent. Over the years, she has insisted, when interviewers asked, that her life was full and not lacking. She has not changed that opinion.

She calls herself a serious reader, and reads “a lot.” She has confessed to being an inveterate fan of “Peanuts,” the comic strip. She likes to putter in the kitchen. But, when one journalist asked, “What about boyfriends?” she politely replied, “It is not a question I answer.”

In 1987, when she was 15, Midori told this interviewer that her budding career did not keep her from “having fun and having friends” and that she was “not deprived in any way.”

Eight years later, she says she might change the past, if she could, but not because she has regrets.

“If I went back, I would probably do everything differently, not because I don’t like my life, but because I like to change.”

She explains: “It’s not that I’m not satisfied with my life. But I want to make good use (of it).

“I’m ready for adventure.”

One path toward that, she has decided, is to go back to school. After completing her high school education at a professional children’s school, five years ago, Midori has now enrolled in college.

“In January, I started. I’m studying at the Gallatin Division of New York University, where I am designing my own course. I’m an undergraduate, tailor-making my own curriculum, which relates culture and society.” She talks quickly about projects she wants to bring to her studies, of juxtaposing areas of the arts, comparing artists.”

The same enthusiasm colors her talk about the repertory for her instrument. Has she conquered it all? Are there parts she has neglected? Is it all old hat?

“No, no,” she answers, with some vehemence. “There are still some pieces I don’t know. I have to work on those. And, of course, I always want to look back at the old pieces, find new things, new feelings, in them. Music-making is so personal--the person changes, and then the music seems different. There is so much. . . . I will never stop studying. In the meantime, I’m enjoying life.”

KRAFT REPLIES: In my Feb. 6 review of the Long Beach Symphony, I wondered what had happened to William Kraft’s Piano Concerto between its premiere in 1973 and its revival during that evening’s concert. The composer wrote to fill me in: “The PBS film that was made about the Concerto was shown on 72 stations in the U.S. There have been performances by the Rochester and Houston Symphonies, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London ((Zubin) Mehta again conducting), and with the Alabama Symphony under Paul Polivnick, who also recorded (it) with Harmonia Mundi.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS: Andrew Dawes, former first violinist of the Orford Quartet, will replace Peter Oundjian, first violinist of the Tokyo Quartet, for one season only, while Oundjian recovers from a strain to his left hand. . . . Richard Gaddes, founder (in 1976) and co-director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis until 1985, will become associate general director of Santa Fe Opera, where he began his U.S. career, effective June 1. Gaddes replaces executive director Nigel Redden, who has resigned. . . . Prize-winning American violinist Frank Almond will become concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony in September. Previously, Almond held a similar post with the Ft. Worth Symphony. . . . Enrique Diemecke, who currently holds conducting posts with orchestras in Mexico City and Flint, Mich., has been named principal guest conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand. . . . David Pocock, founder and artistic director of the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Michigan, has become education director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In his new position, Pocock will be responsible for the design, development and administration of all educational programs of the Philadelphia Orchestra Assn.