Midori on the strings

The National Symphony Orchestra is back this season in a big way, and they are sounding wonderful in this the last year of Music Director Leonard Slatkin's tenure with the group. We heard them for the first time this fall Friday night, and I found myself unexpectedly pleased with their performance, sound, and excitement.

My UMCP English professor friend Kevin joined nephew Ryan, Laurent, Laurent's new beau Carter (coincidentally, a UMCP English student!), and me for a delightful evening at the Kennedy Center. We were, alas, too late in our arrival at the K.C. to have a chance to cocktail before curtain, since Laurent is worse than Brian about getting dressed on time (or, I should say, not so much getting dressed as getting started getting dressed). That put me in a bit of a bad mood, since I'd been anxious to see if the bars in the lobby were featuring special drinks making use of Midori, the green melon-flavored liqueur from Japan. Why Midori? Because the featured soloist for the evening was the wonderful Japanese violinist Midori.

The primary reason I went to the concert Friday night was to hear Midori play Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2, and, wow! what a stellar performance it turned out to be!

The Bartok is a long and notoriously difficult work for violinists, and the "modernness" and occasional 12-tonality of the work doesn't make things any easier for the soloist. Midori was an incredibly active and physically emotive player, too, getting such exercise that I'm sure she must have been exhausted just from her fortysome-minute-long workout.

Midori is a diminutive, beautiful, young woman (I would guess thirty-something) who wears her raven hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Her first appearance on stage was breathtaking as she sailed in wearing a stunning sleeveless sheath gown made of shimmering reddish-brown and metallic gold fabric. Her metallic gold ballet slippers peeked out on occasion from beneath her hem. She was the perfect accessory to the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesu instrument she plays.

I thought the performance was excellent and deserving of more than the two curtain calls she got. They also were not properly recognizing of the NSO harpist, who has such an unusually major role in this concerto, she should almost be considered a subsidiary soloist. That's one of the quirks of the Washington/NSO audiences, though, where often world-class soloists play brilliantly in the first half to lukewarm applause and then mediocre second half orchestra-only works get standing ovations—as was the case Friday night.

Preceding the Bartok, the NSO played "Toccata Concertante," a short fanfare-like work by 20th century composer Irving Fine. I was not previously familiar with his works. This was a pleasant piece with multiple internal divisions giving the ten minute work complexity. It also reminded me a bit of some of the movie film scores from the 1940s and '50s.

After the interval, we heard a very competent reading of Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C major ("Great"), D. 944.

In the previous three seasons, I've often remarked at the sloppiness of the orchestra and how they just never seem to play up to their potential with Maestro Slatkin at the podium—an indictment often confirmed when I heard them play wonderfully under the batons of various guest conductors. That wasn't the case Friday night. The playing was clear and crisp and they stayed with Slatkin, even in some of those difficult and frenetic passages in the Bartok.

My only complaint? After all these years, Slatkin still hasn't learned how to dress for work. With all the men of the orchestra in white tie and tails, Slatkin appeared in a black suit with what looked to be a solid black banded collar shirt and no tie!