Violinist Midori Offers a Controlled, Elegant Recital

Midori’s recital Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was almost everything it could be.

With her meticulous partner, pianist Robert McDonald, the 26-year-old violinist offered exquisitely honed and earnestly felt performances of music by Beethoven, Brahms, Szymanowski and Faure. Her phraseology was dart-like, keen, glistening, strongly directed and fastidiously aimed. The craftsmanship of these readings was intricate, minutely observed from first note to last. Her technique allowed her to draw the finest points.

But, if Midori’s recital ultimately proved anything, it’s that you can’t control music in this way and have it live and breathe. Midori did everything right, but she kept the lid on. One admired her uncompromising seriousness while wishing she would, just for a moment, ease up.

The Pavilion can be a tough room for solo violin recitals--way too big--but it’s not a problem for Midori. With her purity of tone, she can project wafer-thin lines and dainty designs readily. She wasn’t very good at projecting grandeur though, which requires a certain amplitude and poise, not her tightly wound delivery.

There doesn’t seem to be an ounce of empty virtuosity in this violinist. Her program reflected that as much as her playing: starting with an early Beethoven sonata (Opus 12, No. 3) in which the violinist quite literally plays second fiddle to the piano, followed by Faure’s gracefully concise First Sonata and Szymanowski’s fragrant “Mythes” and ending with the somber cadences of Brahms’ D-minor Sonata, Opus 108.

At times, she overstated Beethoven’s straightforward sentences, but those were her only rhetorical mistakes all evening. The dazzling effects in the Szymanowski came off as fully integrated, not showy; even in encore, with Tchaikovsky’s Melodie (Opus 42, No. 3) and Kreisler’s arrangement of Poldini’s “Dancing Doll,” Midori aimed to send her listeners home with a contented sigh, not a whiz-bang wow.

The generosity of these performances was never in doubt; only, sometimes, the music should have been allowed to make its own points.