Japanese violinist Midori dazzles MCA audience

After seeing Midori perform last night at the Maine Center for the Arts, it’s tempting to say she’s still good after all these years. Considering that she’s only 25 years old, that’s quite a remarkable comment. But Midori is a remarkable woman, whose maturity as an artist was in dazzling form last night.

The Japanese-born violinist, who rose to fame in the 1980s as a child prodigy, has a gift that just won’t quit. After more than a dozen years in the classical music limelight, she is still going strong, still filled with that spark that lit up her career in the beginning. She has become at once emotional and articulate with her instrument, and within three measures of the first piece on the program — Mozart’s “Sonata in F Major, K. 376/374D” — she and pianist Robert McDonald caught the audience by the ears and didn’t let go for two hours. Their playing had a brilliance that was tangible in nearly every note of their musical dialogue.

There’s no denying that Midori was the headliner of the night, but as a team, Midori and McDonald played heart to heart and head to head to achieve a democratic unity that had clarity, complexity, depth and humor. Such musical conviction was particularly powerful during George Enescu’s stormy “Sonata No. 3, Op. 25.” Midori burst into energetic and exotic playing that included whistling, popping, chirping sounds. But in the last movement, she and McDonald worked together like thunder and lightning, the piano and violin whipping the notes out together with exhilarating and engaging flair. It was just the kind of cut-loose intensity you might expect from a composition written in the 1920s, as this piece was.

“Declamation,” by 20th century Italian-American composer Nicolas Flagello, is rhythmically turbulent and could easily be heavy-handed, but these virtuoso musicians picked it up and grabbed hold of its tormented themes with a sense of discovery and even sweetness at times.

The crowning charmer of this concert was Cesar Franck’s “Sonata in A Major.” It was volatile, with a central section that was attractively poised but underscored with a tremendous drama and urgency. Midori’s signature ardor and meticulous agility stayed high throughout this concert, and yet the Franck and Mozart were clearly favorites for the audience.

Two encores of small works by Fritz Kreisler — “Schon Rosmarin” and “Syncopation” — were immensely entertaining and lighthearted, and provided a perfectly friendly ending to a heady and dynamic concert.