Midori Plays Bach, Southbank Centre

UPDATE: Due to ill health, Midori will be replaced by German violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Known for his measured playing and repudiation of melodrama, Tetzlaff promises to bring a rather different reading to the Bach. The two Partitas remain on the programme, but will be joined by the Sonata No. 3 and Bela Bartok's Sonata for solo violin.

The music of Bach has always held a special place in Midori’s repertoire. When she was eleven, she stunned the tutors at the Julliard Pre-College by performing the ‘Chaconne’ – generally regarded as one of the most demanding solo violin pieces ever composed – for her audition piece. Now, in a monumental recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, she will play four of Bach’s unsurpassed masterpieces in succession, ending with the piece that made her name.
There are virtuoso violinists, and then there’s Midori Goto. From her debut with the New York Philharmonic at the age of eleven to her sensational reading of Leonard Bernstein’s thirty-minute long Serenade only four years later, she has dazzled the classical world with an intensity and musicality almost unmatched. By the time she was twenty, she had founded Midori and Friends, a non-profit organisation that brings instrumental tuition to children who would otherwise be unable to learn. Now in constant demand for concerts and recordings while teaching at the University of Southern California, her career continues to march from strength to strength.
Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, completed in 1720 but unpublished until almost a century later, set the standard for solo violin music to the present day. They take the instrument to an otherworldly level of refinement and expression, spanning the entire range of emotion and technique. Midori will open with the Partita No. 3, whose prelude famously calls for an advanced bowing technique, then move onto Sonata No. 3 with its monumental fugue. After an interval, she will play the Sonata No. 1 with its lyrical ‘Siciliana’ and energetic ‘Presto,’ before closing with the Partita No. 2. Its final movement, the ‘Ciaconna’ or ‘Chaconne’, is frequently dubbed the greatest solo violin piece ever composed, a monumental set of variations that dance around a simple initial theme. Played by a great violinist, it is sublime; in the hands of Midori, it promises to be transcendent in its power.