Diana Yukawa is a 15-year-old Anglo-Japanese violinist who plays charmingly and has been well trained (by Rodney Friend). Her father died in the terrible crash of flight JAL123 a month before she was born, and on the 14th anniversary of his death she appeared on the mountain-side where the crash took place, playing the Elegy that concludes this disc (it was originally a song, with lyrics by a man whose wife had died in the same incident). With a shrewd eye for commercial exploitation, and a blind one for good taste, this was shown on Japanese television, and Diana Yukawa became a sort of national heroine overnight, referred to as ‘little angel’.
This recital is presumably intended to please her existing public, not to demonstrate how her musicianship is developing. In the Wieniawski and the Sarasate she demonstrates a secure technique, though finds more variety of colour in the former than the latter. Her Paganini, though note-perfect and up to speed, sounds a little forced. There is warm, smooth cantabile in her Massenet, and sensitive quiet playing. She does not over-emotionalise the Elgar; indeed she plays it distinctly fast, as she does Kreisler’s arrangement of Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits. His Liebesleid has pleasing sentiment, though I could have done with a change of tone-colour for the middle section. She gives rather sketchy accounts of Kreisler’s trashy Poldini and Lehar arrangements. Makino’s Elegy is a sentimental trifle, Nakamura’s piece, originally a pop song (made famous, you’ve perhaps guessed, by someone else who died in that crash) has a folksy charm. Diana Yukawa’s next disc, we are told, will be of Saint-Saens. She shows enough ability here to make one look forward to it, but this repertoire requires a sheer character (or sheer cheek) that is not commonly possessed by 15-year-olds. A decent recording, though, and Nigel Clayton plays supportively