FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 6, 2007
Contact: Colin Byrne
Sales and Communications Manager
Phone: (407) 646-1561
Fax: (407) 646-2692
E-mail: cbyrne@bachfestivalflorida.org
Winter Park, FL —The Bach Festival Society of Winter Park is pleased to announce that Midori and Robert McDonald will appear on the Visiting Artists Series Saturday, March 17, 2007, at 8 pm in the Tiedtke Concert Hall, Rollins College. Tickets are $40 and $30.
Midori will visit Winter Park as part of a dizzying schedule of concertizing and community engagements both in the US and abroad, highlighted by the premiere performances of a new work for violin and piano she commissioned from Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara and the first international program sponsored by her Japanese outreach organization, Music Sharing. The U.S. premiere of Rautavaara’s Lost Landscapes, commissioned in 2004, took place in Albany, New York, on March 2nd—just two weeks before her performance of this work in Winter Park. Midori and the pianist Robert McDonald, her longtime collaborator, will perform this work along with Beethoven’s Sonata No.5 (“Spring”), Debussy’s Sonata in G Minor, and Richard Strauss’ Sonata, Op.18.
Midori was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. She received her first violin at the age of 4 and studied with her mother, Setsu Goto, for several years, practicing with her every day. A visiting musician friend living in New York City heard Midori play and encouraged her mother to make a tape. Setsu Goto held a small cassette recorder in her lap, and, as the family's two dogs barked, Midori played the Paganini Concerto No. 1 and a Caprice, a Bach solo sonata, and the Saint-Saëns Third Concerto. The tape ended up coincidentally in the hands of the prominent American violin teacher Dorothy DeLay.
In 1982, when Zubin Mehta first heard her play, he was so impressed that he invited her to be a surprise guest soloist for the New York Philharmonic's traditional New Year's Eve concert, on which occasion she received a standing ovation and the impetus to begin a major career.
In the years since, Midori has worked with artists such as Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Emanuel Ax, Jonathan Biss, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph Eschenbach, Nobuko Imai, Mariss Jansons, Yo-Yo Ma, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Isaac Stern, and Pinchas Zukerman. In past seasons, she has also appeared with such orchestras as the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), Orchestre de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, and Vienna Philharmonic.
Midori’s accompanist, Robert McDonald, has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Far East as a renowned solo recitalist and an esteemed recital partner. McDonald has performed with Isaac Stern, Midori, and numerous other artists and has taken stage as soloist with the San Francisco, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Curtis symphony orchestras. He has also appeared with the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Costa Rica and with the Orchestra Sinfonica Haydn di Bolzano e Trento in Italy. Mr. McDonald is an active chamber musician and has collaborated with the Juilliard, American, Muir, Takács, Brentano, Fine Arts, and Chicago quartets, as well as with Musicians from Marlboro on several of its tours.
About the Bach Festival Society
The Bach Festival Society, located in Winter Park, Florida, is the premier classical music organization in the state of Florida and one of the longest continuously operating Bach Festivals in the country. The Bach Festival Society brings the highest caliber of classical music to Central Florida. Performances are held in the intimate setting of the Tiedtke Concert Hall and the Knowles Memorial Chapel on the beautiful campus of Rollins College.
For more information regarding the upcoming season or to order tickets, please call the Bach Festival Society at 407-646-2182 or visit us online at www.bachfestivalflorida.org.
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