Connections that bring violin virtuoso Midori to Sri Lanka
The arc of music history and bonds of friendship determined the path the great violinist Midori will travel to Colombo, where she is performing on December 1 to support the educational efforts of the Chamber Music Society of Colombo.
Midori is coming to Sri Lanka where, accompanied by the pianist Ozgur Aydin, she will play works by Brahms, Clara Schumann, Poulenc and Ravel, a programme identical to that at a concert a few days before to honour the renowned conductor Zubin Mehta in Mumbai where Mehta, 88, was born. Midori’s astonishing debut at the age of 11 was on stage with the New York Philharmonic at its celebrated New Year’s Eve concert under the baton of Mehta.
Midori will perform on December 1 to support the educational efforts of the Chamber Music Society of Colombo
Her connection to Sri Lanka and the CMSC, meanwhile, is because of her friendship of several decades with its principal, violinist Lakshman Joseph de Saram who was at Julliard precollege with the Japanese-born American violinist when she moved from Japan to New York with her mother in the early 1980s to study under Dorothy DeLay. Lakshman recalls being invited to attend concerts in New York by her mother, Setsu Goto, also a violinist, where the wunderkind of the classical music world would sometimes fall asleep.
The connections that bring Midori at the height of her bejewelled career to Sri Lanka and India after recently being on tour with the Vienna Philharmonic are the result of New York being a magnet for those seeking classical music education when she was growing up and the world’s financial capital that easily funded orchestras, music schools and two large opera houses. In another delightful repeating groove from Midori's early New York years, the pianist Rohan De Silva, who played piano for her when she was still at Julliard four decades ago, will be in the audience for her Colombo concert on December 1. (Rohan, who frequently collaborated with Itzhak Perlman in the years since and teaches at Julliard, will be conducting a masterclass on December 2 for the CMSC).
In 1992, Midori set up Midori and Friends, a precocious educational outreach after she learned of budget cuts at public schools there. She had just crossed 21 and many of the neighbourhoods she taught in were seeing a decline in violent crime but were still considered unsafe. Her first stint teaching musicians followed in 2001 when she substituted at the Manhattan School of Music for a colleague on medical leave. “He was unfortunately unable to come back so I continued teaching those students,” Midori said in an interview via email and voicemail from Vienna. “The teaching was something I was always interested in doing because I had watched my mother teaching and my mentors teaching. It seemed very natural to share that.”
Despite a busy concert schedule, Midori has been part of the music faculty at the University of Southern California, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and most recently the Ravinia Stearns Music Institute in Chicago, where she has headed the strings program since 2023. If this seems a lot to juggle even for a concert violinist with very deft hands, she also completed a master’s degree in psychology at New York University in 2005. “I wasn’t really aware of the benefits that teaching brings to the teacher,” Midori said. “Now I feel that it gives me access to younger musicians. They energise me. As soon as I started to teach, I realised the pleasure it gave me and the learning opportunities it gave me and the special relationship that came with each student.”
In Colombo, Midori will be conducting a masterclass on November 30 with a 12-year-old playing a Bach solo piece, a 19-year-old playing a violin piano sonata of the 18th century Italian composer Francesco Maria Veracini and two CMSC regulars, violinist Sulara Nanayakkara and pianist Johann Peiris, playing Hindemith.
“Access to music has always been a big topic for me – whether giving access to classical music or music education,” said Midori, 53, who will be on her third visit in a decade to Sri Lanka, where she has developed an addiction to the island’s coconut water and enjoys its food.
For the sold-out concert at the Lionel Wendt, Midori will be performing Clara Schumann’s Three Romances for violin and piano, Brahm’s violin piano sonata number 1, Poulenc’s violin piano sonata (FP 119) and two pieces by Ravel. Again, layers of classical musical history and enduring friendships loom large over this concert selection. The Brahms violin piano sonata, his sixth attempt at writing a violin-piano sonata, was enthusiastically received by Clara Schumann who, with her husband the composer Robert Schumann, was a mentor to Brahms. She was a widow when Brahms sent the manuscript to her in the late 1870s after a quarter century of intense friendship. “Of course I played it through at once, and could not help bursting into tears of joy,” Clara wrote to him, adding that “the last movement could accompany me in my journey from here to the next world.”
Lay listeners such as this reviewer may find themselves more enraptured by the first movement, which was akin to a religious blessing. The casual pizzicato plucking seemed harp-like, almost an afterthought. The sonata is also the sweetest of rebuttals by Brahms to Liszt, who was pushing ahead towards the atonal music of the 20th century. (Brahms’ teacher Joseph Joachim’s letter of resignation as concertmaster of Liszt’s orchestra included this gem: “Your music is entirely antagonistic to me; it contradicts everything which the spirits of our greats have nourished my mind from my earliest youth.”)
The Poulenc, composed almost six decades later in 1942-1953, has echoes of Hindemith, but also features a lively conversation between the piano and the violin that characterises the Brahms violin sonata 1. The Poulenc sonata has a darker tone, however. This was Poulenc’s first success at such a sonata after four tries and momentarily overcame his distaste for “the violin in the singular”. He never wrote another.
The early passages of Ravel’s Tzigane, which have the haunting feel of gypsy music, are in essence “the violin in singular” till the piano (or orchestra) come in. Midori’s virtuosity and stamina will be on display. But, then this is a performer who is still at her peak almost four decades after she famously broke strings twice in a performance at Tanglewood conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who looked on befuddled as she borrowed violins from colleagues in the orchestra and continued unflustered, even though her violin was smaller to allow someone in their early teens to play it. The New York Times front page trumpeted, “Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins”.
Midori played Tzigane at her recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1990, days before she turned 19. As with Colombo and Mumbai this year, it was the last piece on the programme. The diminutive performer looked as if she might be swallowed up by that gargantuan, high-ceilinged stage, looking a real-life Cinderella in an oversized dress. At the conclusion, audience members rushed forward with bouquets. In the encore, her delicate pizzicato strumming brought a round of applause mid-performance.
Audiences at Carnegie Hall and those lucky enough to hear her almost 35 years later in Colombo would likely agree that Ravel’s mission statement applies also to Midori’s performances and passion for teaching. “My objective is technical perfection. I can strive unceasingly to this end,” Ravel said. “The important thing is to get nearer to it all the time.”
| Midori on Isaac Stern, Zubin Mehta and Colombo | |
| From Isaac Stern (who was a long-time mentor) I learned many things. One of the most important things was about the importance of taking responsibility for musical decisions, for what one decided to do in each phrase, in each melody and taking responsibilities as a citizen of the community and society.His way of teaching me was never about ‘Play this particular passage in this way.’ He never told me: ‘Play this slower, louder faster.’ That was never the case. But instead he would ask me questions: ‘ You realise you were doing this…why did you decide to do it this way?’ It was these questions that made me think more logically about the music. It made me look deeper inside me about why I was doing certain things and why exactly I wanted to communicate in a certain way. I find that this is a process that is so important and supports a person in finding himself or herself. It’s important for me to have (chances to teach) because I received so much from my teachers and mentors. These experiences I like to share and pass on. It’s incredible to see how my experiences are taken in and then made into something else and have their own life. I will be going to Mumbai to inaugurate the Zubin Mehta performing series. I feel greatly honoured to start this series. It’s going to be the same programme which I am playing in Colombo. I owe my very beginning of a career to Zubin Mehta and to be able to start a series in his name is for me such a pleasure and honour. In Colombo I want to share this joy we have for music. I am very much looking forward to meeting young people who are passionate about music and are committed to working to better themselves in their instrumental, artistic skills.
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