June 11, 2026 — Kyoto Botanical Gardens.
June 12, 2026 — Nagai Botanical Garden, Osaka.
The flowers I encountered during these two early-summer days are presented here with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, performed by the young Midori.
Berlin, April 22, 1990.
Midori, violin.
Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductor.
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
Midori was only eighteen years old.
Yet this performance cannot be explained simply by the word “youth.”
From the instant the solo violin enters, the music seems to acquire a will of its own.
There is youthful vitality, certainly.
But there is also remarkable concentration—a determination to look deeply into the music and enter its innermost world.
Through Midori’s violin, Mendelssohn’s passionate song rises directly into the air.
I have brought that sound together with the flowers of early summer in 2026.
Kyoto Botanical Gardens.
Nagai Botanical Garden.
A flower in bloom possesses youth as well.
But a flower is not beautiful merely because it is young.
It is beautiful because, for one brief moment, it reveals everything life has gathered within it.
The passion of the first movement.
The quiet song of the second.
And the radiant joy of the finale, as though the music itself were rushing into light.
Seen through Midori’s violin, the flowers seem to change their expressions in answer to the music.
Berlin in 1990.
Kyoto and Osaka in 2026.
Music and photographs separated by thirty-six years meet here within a single flow of time.
A performance disappears at the very moment it is played.
A flower cannot remain in bloom forever.
And that is precisely why we wish to preserve the moment.
The moment the young Midori engraved into Mendelssohn’s music.
The moments of early summer I witnessed at Kyoto Botanical Gardens and Nagai Botanical Garden.
When music and photography meet, time that seemed to have disappeared begins to move once again.
Midori.
Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
And the flowers of Kyoto and Osaka.
Together with Mendelssohn’s timeless melody.