Over to Bucharest by way of Madrid this week for a concert from the 2011 International Georges Enescu Festival, featuring the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, conducted by Vasily Petrenko and featuring Midori, violin solo. The concert was recorded September 17, 2011 at the Grand Palace de Bucharest by ROR Rumania.
The concert opens with Enescu’s Suite Number 2, opus 20 – followed by Walton’s concerto for violin and Orchestra, with Midori and encore of Bach’s Fugue BWV 1003. The second half is Prokofiev’s Symphony Number 7 and concludes with Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance opus 46 Number 1.
Midori gave her first public performance at the age of six, playing one of the 24 Caprices of Paganini in her native Osaka. In 1982 she and her mother moved to New York City, where Midori started violin studies with Dorothy DeLay at Pre-College Division of Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival and School. As her audition piece, Midori performed Bach’s thirteen-minute-long Chaconne, generally considered one of the most difficult solo violin pieces. In the same year, she made her concert debut with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, a conductor with whom she would later record on the Sony Classical label. In 1986 came her legendary performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade at Tanglewood, conducted by Bernstein. During the performance, she broke the E string on her violin, then again on the concertmaster’s Stradivarius after she borrowed it. She finished the performance with the associate concertmaster’s Guadagnini and received a standing ovation. The next day’s The New York Times front page carried the headline, “Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins”.
When Midori was 15, she left Juilliard Pre-College in 1987 after four years and became a full-time professional violinist. In October 1989, she celebrated her 18th birthday with her Carnegie Hall orchestral debut, playing Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2. She made her Carnegie Hall recital debut in 1990 four days before her 19th birthday. Both performances were critically acclaimed. In 1990, she also graduated from the Professional Children’s School which she attended for academic subjects.
In 1992, she formed Midori and Friends, a non-profit organization that aims to bring music education to children in New York City and in Japan after learning of severe cutbacks to music education in U.S. schools. Her organization Music Sharing began as the Tokyo branch-office of Midori and Friends and was certified as an independent organization in 2002. Music Sharing focuses on education about Western classical music and traditional Japanese music for young people, including instrument instruction for the disabled. Its International Community Engagement Program is a training program for internationally chosen aspiring musicians that promotes cultural exchange and community engagement.
In 2000, Midori graduated magna cum laude from the Gallatin School at New York University with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Gender Studies, completing the degree in five years while also continuing to perform in concerts. She later earned a master’s degree in psychology from NYU in 2005. Her master’s thesis was about pain research. In 2001, Midori had returned to the stage and took a teaching position at the Manhattan School of Music. In 2001, with the money Midori received from winning the Avery Fisher Prize, she established the Partners in Performance program focusing on classical music organizations in smaller communities. In 2004, Midori launched the Orchestra Residencies program in the U.S. for youth orchestras, which was expanded to include collaborations with orchestras outside the U.S. in 2010.
In 2004, Midori was named a professor at University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music where she is holder of the Jascha Heifetz Chair. She became a full-time resident of Los Angeles in 2006 after a period of bicoastal commuting and was promoted to the chair of the Strings Department in 2007. In 2012 she was named distinguished professor at USC, elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Yale University. Midori was Humanitas Visiting Professor in Classical Music and Music Education at Oxford University 2013–2014. Midori joined the violin faculty of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute in the 2018–2019 academic year and remains on the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music’s violin faculty as a Judge Widney Professor of Music.
Vasily Petrenko made his conducting debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) in November 2004.After this appearance, in July 2005, he was named the RLPO’s principal conductor, the youngest-ever conductor in the post, effective with the 2006–2007 season for an initial contract of 3 years. Since taking up the post, the orchestra’s financial situation and attendance improved. He has also received critical praise for revitalising the orchestra, in Russian repertoire (especially Shostakovich) as well as standard repertoire such as Brahms, and in English music. In May 2007, the RLPO announced that Petrenko had extended his contract with the orchestra to 2012. In September 2009, the orchestra announced a further extension of his contract to 2015, with a change of Petrenko’s title to Chief Conductor. In March 2013, the RLPO announced the conversion of Petrenko’s contract into an extended open-ended agreement with no specific scheduled time of conclusion, and where Petrenko is to give an advance notice of 3 years of when he wishes to conclude his tenure. His first conducting appearance at The Proms was with the RLPO in August 2008.Petrenko and the RLPO have recorded several compact discs for Naxos. Petrenko’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony won the Gramophone orchestral recording of the year in 2009.
Petrenko was chief conductor of the European Union Youth Orchestra from 2015 to 2024. Petrenko became principal guest conductor of the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation in 2016. In January 2021, the orchestra announced the appointment of Petrenko as its next principal conductor, effective 1 September 2021. In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Petrenko suspended his work with the orchestra, stating:
“In response to these terrible events, I have decided to suspend my work in Russia… until peace has been restored.”
Later in 2022, under duress from the Russian Ministry of Culture, Petrenko submitted a letter of resignation from the orchestra.
On to the concert.
