The Palm Beach Post – 11/18/11


Music at the Norton: The Norton Museum of Art hosts a small, occasional music series that continues Sunday, Nov. 20, at 3 p.m. with the Japanese-born pianist Yoko Sata Kothari

Friday, November 18, 2011

Yoko Sata KothariThe Lake Park resident and Tokyo native is a familiar concert figure in Palm Beach County, where she plays solo concerts, anchors the Trillium Piano Trio and operates a music studio with her husband, guitarist Dilip Kothari.

For her concert this weekend, Yoko Kothari will play works by French and Russian composers. Transcriptions of Gabriel Faure’s Pavane and Sicilienne will share the French part of the program with four etudes by Camille Saint-Saens (from his Op. 111). She’ll follow that with the Toccata (Op. 11) of Sergei Prokofiev and the 1931 revision of Rachmaninov’s Sonata No. 2 (in B-flat minor, Op. 35).

“I wanted to play Rachmaninov and I didn’t want to play the etudes-tableaux or the preludes,” she said, referring to the composer’s smaller pieces. “Then this caught my eye. But I wasn’t aware how difficult it was.”

She’s chosen the shorter, leaner version of the sonata for the Norton program, which will run about an hour. The concert in the museum’s auditorium begins at 3 p.m. and admission is $5. Entrance to the museum is $12. Tickets for the concert are available at the Visitor Services Desk.