On November 9th, Midori’s complete Beethoven sonatas cycle with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will be released digitally worldwide by Warner Classics.
The physical CD release will follow in January 2023.
The 2022-2023 season marks the 40th Anniversary of Midori’s professional debut, which took place on New Year’s Eve in 1982 with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. She was 11 years old.
This season, Warner Classics will release a new recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas cycle with Midori and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, which the artists will perform in its entirety at Dartmouth College New Hampshire and Suntory Hall, Tokyo.
The Suntory Hall Beethoven sonatas cycle is part of a five-day celebration of Midori’s anniversary that also pays homage to Beethoven and to Midori’s mentor, the late Isaac Stern, whose significant birthdays fell during Covid lockdowns.
Over the course of the season, Midori, Lederlin and Biss perform Beethoven piano trios in London, Hamburg and Koln while Midori offers the Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Korngold and Detlev Glanert concertos with orchestras in Europe, the United States and Asia.
Two other longstanding passions of Midori – J.S. Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for solo violin and newly commissioned works – are combined in recital programs that Midori performs at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall, the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco and elsewhere in the United States, Canada and Europe throughout the 2022-2023 season.
(Above photo ©Andreas Guballa)
Midori was awarded the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society’s Brahms Prize in 2020 but the prize ceremony had to be postponed because of the Covid pandemic. The event took place on August 20, 2022 at St Bartholomaus Church in Wesselburren.
The jury honored Midori for her internationally celebrated interpretations of the works of Johannes Brahms as well as for the support she gives to the younger generation of artists and her special commitment in the spirit of humanity to projects promoting culture, not least as a UN Peace Ambassador. The prize is endowed with €10,000.
Alongside the prize ceremony Midori performed a program of solo works by J.S. Bach, Jessie Montgomery and John Zorn.
The first recipient of the Brahms Prize was Leonard Bernstein in 1988. Subsequent winners have included Yehudi Menuhin, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Sabine Meyer, Thomas Quasthoff, Christoph Eschenbach and the Thomanerchor.
A profile of Midori published to coincide with the Brahms Prize event can be found in NDR Kultur
Carnegie Hall’s all-star benefit Concert for Ukraine, in which Midori participated, is available to stream on-demand beginning Wednesday, June 8 at 2 PM EDT for two weeks.
Proceeds from the live event on May 23—including 100% of ticket sales—supported Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid nonprofit organization that provides urgently needed medical supplies to relief groups on the ground in Ukraine. Donations can still be made directly through Direct Relief’s website: www.directrelief.org/Carnegie-Hall
The stream can be accessed via:
Carnegie Hall website
Carnegie Hall+
YouTube Stream
Facebook Stream
Three years after the last International Community Engagement Program (ICEP) took place in Japan, Oji Hall in Tokyo will be the site of a concert by the ICEP quartet, consisting of violinists Midori and Yebin Yoo, violist Erika Gray and cellist Noémie Raymond-Friset.
The musicians will also visit schools, hospitals and nursing homes in Japan, as they have traditionally done in June each year.
The Oji Hall program, taking place on June 16th will feature performances of Rachmaninov’s String Quartet No. 1 in G minor and Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major as well as a report on recent Music Sharing activities. Music Sharing is the non-profit organization under whose aegis the International Community Engagement Program has taken place since 2006.
For more information on the concert, please look on the facebook page. More information on ICEP can be found here.
Participants will include singer Michael Feinstein, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Evgeny Kissin, soprano Angel Blue, and a host of leading classical, jazz, opera and Broadway stars, as well as the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, an ensemble that specializes in secular and sacred music from Ukraine.
100% of the proceeds will go to Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid nonprofit organization that provides urgently needed medical supplies to relief groups on the ground in Ukraine.
Please check the Carnegie Hall website for more details.
In early May, Midori was delighted to hold her first live Orchestra Residencies Program (ORP) post-lockdown at Artis – Naples in Florida.
Founded in 2004, ORP is the collaborative musical and educational project in which Midori works with youth orchestras to provide meaningful experiences for the next generation of musicians and music lovers. During the Covid pandemic, she offered online masterclasses and workshops when travel and live appearances were not possible.
Midori’s Artis – Naples residency included intensive work with the Naples Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the Naples Philharmonic Youth Symphonia. She rehearsed with both ensembles, coached chamber music, presented workshops and led master classes over four days. She also gave presentations at several local schools.
The Artis – Naples residency concluded with a performance by Midori with the Naples Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Naples Philharmonic Youth Symphonia led by Radu Paponiu and Gregg Anderson in a program that featured Spring Cadenzas, a commissioned work by American composer Derek Bermel written specifically for Midori’s Orchestra Residencies Program, and the third movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor.
The war in Ukraine is causing the loss of precious, innocent lives, and stealing the energies and the potential of those who remain and those who have fled the country, all for reasons and goals that cannot withstand the trials of decency and conscience.
Such acts are neither justifiable nor forgivable.
I stand in concert with my friends and colleagues in the international community in condemning this extreme act of human greed, aggression, and destruction, and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
In the meantime, my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine in their time of trial.
She will speak about non-profit leadership and volunteering
The lecture will be delivered online on Zoom – Free registration.
Date: Thursday, February 3, 2022
Time: 4 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. and Canada)
Click here to register
Dear Friends,
The Year 2021 is coming to close. About this time last year, I was hoping we would be able to put the pandemic and its atrocities behind us in the forthcoming months and be able to find a new “norm”. As we have discovered, it was not so simple.
The last twelve months have given me much time to reflect, contemplate, and question who we are as people. We have been given opportunities to consider the choices we make while facing the fact that we are not invincible.
Sometimes we both overestimate and underestimate others and ourselves. We can fail to be thankful for what we have been given, and even assail or destroy these “gifts”. Resilience and vulnerability co-exist.
In 2022 I commemorate the 40th anniversary of my debut, as well as milestone anniversaries for three of my organizations: Midori & Friends, MUSIC SHARING, and Partners in Performance. Through all the various related activities, I hope to demonstrate and share what I have learned.
Midori
