Takezawa Returns To Seattle Orchestra

Kyoko Takezawa has appeared with the world's best orchestras, including the Moscow, New York, New Japan and Osaka philharmonics; the Boston, Chicago, London, New World and NHK symphonies; Berlin Radio, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Monte Carlo, Philadelphia and Royal Scottish National orchestras; and the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Cleveland, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Houston, Toronto, Dallas, Montreal, Detroit and Cincinnati; the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Dresden Staatskapelle, Sapporo Symphony Orchestra of Japan and the BBC Wales at the Proms. In addition to annual festival appearances, she has collaborated with such luminaries as Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Joseph Suk and Cho-Liang Lin. She is co-director of the Suntory Festival Soloists of Suntory Hall in Tokyo. In 1986, Takezawa was awarded the Gold Medal at the Second Quadrennial International Violin Competition in Indianapolis and later, received the Idemitsu Award for outstanding musicianship.

Takezawa began violin studies at age 3 and toured as a member of the Suzuki Method Association at 7. In 1982, she won the 51st Annual Japan Music Competition. At 17, she entered the Aspen Music School to study with Dorothy DeLay, with whom Takezawa continued to study at The Juilliard School.

The program begins with the Suite from Pulcinella, in which Igor Stravinsky reworked 18th-century Neapolitan melodies, revitalizing them with the compositional technique and orchestral palette of a modern master to create a sparkling, audacious score. The second piece, Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1, was written as a love letter to a beautiful young violinist.

Its first movement brings an outpouring of romantic ardor, while the second pays tribute to her fine musicianship. The final work on the program is a symphony in the classic tradition, but also a spiritual declaration of sorts. While in no way an ecclesiastic composition, Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 2 features several hymn-like melodies and a recurring fanfare that seems a summons from on high. The Adagio third movement is one of Schumann's most beautiful meditations.

Single tickets from $17 to $110. -- www.seattlesymphony.org