She quietly plays, draws us in, allows us to be charmed or impressed. Their double and triple stops announce, “THIS IS GREAT MUSIC!” Many violinists treat Bach’s solo work as sacred masterpieces that audiences must worship. Her Bach performances were ingratiating in their musicality and dazzling in their easy virtuosity. 3 in E major.Īny living composer would admire the careful stewardship that Midori gave their works. 1 in B minor to the joyous Preludio of Bach’s Partita no.
It was an arresting work which provided a contrasting bridge from the dizzy final dance of Bach’s Partita no. Other times it lingered on barely-speaking harmonics, pitch deteriorating into noise. Sometimes it loudly ground away on crunchy tremolos. Written in a largely dissonant idiom, it provides brief, elusive glimpses of the Bach Sonatas, Bartók, Paganini, and Elliott Carter. His “Passagen” is based on the B-A-C-H motif. Not beholden to theories, with omnivorous musical tastes, equally at home in concert music and improvisation, Zorn is one of the key American composers of his generation, yet his concert music has not really found its way into programming - at least here in San Diego. John Zorn has emerged as the Grand Old Man of what used to be called Downtown music. Midori played the latter version, nimbly duplicating the shimmering modulations and fuzzy distortions of the electronic signals, with bits of Bach poking through. It coexists as a duet between a live violinist and recordings of jamming signals and as a solo violin piece. 2 in B minor being jammed by German, Italian, and Soviet electronic signals. “Long Waves and Random Pulses” imagines a World War II-era radio performance of the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita no.
For Midori’s concerts, the one contemporary work that directly reacted to a Bach piece on the same program was Gosfield’s “Long Waves and Random Pulses.” There’s a trend over the past decade or two to juxtapose Bach’s solo string music with modern works, which is part of a larger trend across the classical field to commission composers to create a companion work to a much-loved masterpiece. Interleaved into these masterly performances were solo violin works by Thierry Escaich, Annie Gosfield, Jessie Montgomery, and John Zorn.
On Thursday and Friday evening at Baker-Baum Concert Hall, the La Jolla Music Society presented violinist Midori in the six Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin by Johann Sebastian Bach.
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