Harpist Yukimo Endo Schlaffer Performs with Dallas Chamber Symphony

Yukimo Endo Schlaffer will be at Moody Performance Hall on April 21, performing as featured soloist with the Dallas Chamber Symphony. The program is not light: Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane, Henryk Górecki’s Three Pieces in Old Style, and Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen. Three demanding works. One harpist from Tokyo.

“I love the harp. So, of course, no regret for that, but still, moving the harp is hard,” she said.

Moving it is one thing. Making it dance is another.

Debussy composed Danse sacrée et danse profane in 1904 as a kind of argument between two emotional states, reverence and release, played out across roughly ten minutes of solo writing that doesn’t forgive imprecision. Górecki’s Three Pieces in Old Style brings a folk-rooted simplicity alongside it, and Strauss’ Metamorphosen, written in 1945 as Germany lay in ruins, closes the evening with something closer to grief than resolution. The April 21 program at Moody Performance Hall has a cumulative weight that most solo appearances don’t carry.

Endo Schlaffer’s background prepared her for exactly this kind of work. She was born in Tokyo and started on music theory and piano at three years old, inside a family that didn’t tolerate careless playing.

“Growing up in the musician’s family is very tough because when I’m practicing, whether they’re making dinner or whatever the situation, they’re going to say, ‘You have to play one more time, or that note is wrong,’” Endo Schlaffer said. “Now I appreciate that a lot, because you don’t really get that usually. And it toughened me up, and it also really educated me a lot.”

She picked up the harp at nine. Her first teacher, Ayako Shinozaki, shaped everything that followed.

“She is like my second mother,” Endo Schlaffer told NBC DFW.

Shinozaki built the technical and artistic foundation that would carry Endo Schlaffer through the next three decades. After finishing her undergraduate degree at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, she had a choice between Paris and New York. She chose Juilliard, where she studied under Nancy Allen and completed her master’s degree. Then came the harder choice: stay or go home.

She stayed.

“I really don’t know anything. I learned, I studied, but I did not really feel I received fully all the benefits that U.S. can offer,” Endo Schlaffer said.

That conviction took her to Chicago, where she joined the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training ensemble of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, working under Sarah Bullen. It’s the kind of position that separates serious musicians from those who are merely talented. She wasn’t finished. She auditioned for New World Symphony and served as its principal harpist from 2001 to 2004, three years of deepening her command of American orchestral culture before moving on.

The instrument she’s hauled through all of it isn’t exactly portable. A concert harp can run over six feet tall and weigh close to 90 pounds. It won’t fit in an overhead bin. It doesn’t go in a cab without planning. Endo Schlaffer has made the logistical arrangements hundreds of times across Japan, Europe, and the United States, and she doesn’t pretend it isn’t a burden. But she also doesn’t pretend there’s anything she’d rather be doing.

Tickets for the April 21 performance start at $21. Moody Performance Hall is located at 2520 Flora Street in Dallas. Information is available through the Dallas Chamber Symphony at nbcdfw.com, where Endo Schlaffer spoke with NBC DFW.