Midori, violin and Robert McDonald, piano November 8, 2010

n artist and musical citizen of uncompromising integrity, Midori has established herself as a formidable performer, educator, entrepreneur, and arts leader. Devoting considerable time and personal resources to arts education in the US and abroad, Midori has brought special visibility and notable impact with community initiatives directed at replenishing hands-on music-making in the public schools. She has also been an important advocate for music of our time, spearheading commissions and widely performing new works.

In this intimate Lively Arts performance, accompanied on piano by longtime collaborator Robert McDonald, Midori continues her approach in recent years of balancing mainstays of the repertoire—here, sonatas by Bach, Mozart, and Bartók—with less frequently performed works from the 20th and 21st centuries. In this latter category, Midori considers two very different approaches to the nocturne: Szymanowski’s stately Nocturne and Tarantella for Violin and Piano (1915) and George Crumb’s haunting and texturally expansive Four Nocturnes (Night Music II) of 1964.

Official Website: http://livelyarts.stanford.edu/event.php?code=MIDO