Colorful Nadja brings her string magic back to town

In the classical-music world, there are only a handful of names where the first name alone suffices to identify the artist. But when you say "Nadja," most music lovers know you're talking about the charismatic violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, whose face and body so completely mirror the music she plays that every performance is almost a dance event.

Nadja is back with the Seattle Symphony and music director Gerard Schwarz this weekend, preceding the orchestra's Southern California tour. And because the orchestra is flexing its tour-repertoire muscles, the current subscription program is more complicated than usual. Tonight, for instance, Nadja plays the Barber Violin Concerto with the orchestra, which also performs works of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Then Saturday and Sunday, the soloist switches to Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, and the orchestra plays the mighty Bruckner Symphony No. 5.

Starting Wednesday, the Symphony musicians head south for four days in the sun, with concerts scheduled for Santa Barbara, Palm Desert, San Diego and Los Angeles. (So great is the ticket demand in Palm Desert — where many Northwesterners spend the winter — that an additional chamber concert has been scheduled.)

Since the age of 17, when Salerno-Sonnenberg became the youngest winner of the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition, she has riveted public attention by daring to do things her way: dressing in a purple jumpsuit for concert appearances, striding about the stage and interpreting the music with the kind of body language classical artists don't usually employ. Nothing seems to stop her; she arrived on crutches for one Seattle recital following a water-skiing accident, and played an energetic full-length program. On a later occasion, she went on tour with a bandaged finger after accidentally chopping off the tip of her fingering pinkie in a tomato-slicing mishap (the fingertip was surgically reattached and is now fine).

Colorful and outspoken, Nadja has been featured on many TV talk shows, including CBS' "60 Minutes" and "Sunday Morning"; CNN's "Newsstand"; NBC's Nightly News and "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson"; A&E's "Artist of the Week" with Elliot Forrest; Bravo's "Arts & Minds"; PBS' "Live from Lincoln Center," and others.

She also was the subject of an Academy Award-winning 1999 documentary, "Speaking in Strings," in which she spoke candidly about a suicide attempt at one low point in her life. In 1999 she was one of the winners of the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

John O'Conor

Keyboard fans are in luck this coming week — and so are Beethoven fans — when the terrific Irish pianist John O'Conor comes to the University of Washington for what is termed "A Celebration of Beethoven."

O'Conor, who has recently recorded Beethoven piano concertos with Andreas Delfs and the London Symphony Orchestra, is something of a specialist in the classical-era and early-romantic piano repertoire. With a long and highly regarded discography, and a touring schedule that this season will take him to Italy, France, Korea, China, Japan, Spain, Israel, Canada, Poland, Australia, Turkey and the U.S., it's always seemed a mystery why this outstanding pianist doesn't have a higher public-recognition factor. His 2000 Mozart performance with the Seattle Symphony was spectacularly good.

O'Conor's recital Tuesday is a dream program: an all-Beethoven recital featuring the "Pathétique," "Waldstein" and "Moonlight" sonatas, plus the Op. 126 Bagatelles.

The performance caps a two-day residency at the University of Washington School of Music, where he also leads a daylong Saturday presentation in Brechemin Auditorium: "Beethoven: Insights and Inspiration." O'Conor heads a panel discussion by Beethoven aficionados (including UW faculty pianist Craig Sheppard, who has performed all of Beethoven's piano sonatas at Meany Theater) and gives a master class for selected high-school pianists. As a finale, UW piano students perform movements of Beethoven sonatas. The day's activities are free and open to the public.

Sara Davis Buechner

The Virtuoso Piano Series at Town Hall Seattle continues Saturday night with a program by pianist Sara Davis Buechner, "Reflections East and West: Mozart, Ibert, Poulenc, Taku and Nakada." Buechner has won prizes at the Queen Elisabeth, Leeds and other top competitions, as well as the gold medal at the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Competition. She was a bronze medalist at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition.

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com