Midori is a near-superstar in the world of classical music. She’s probably one cut below Placido, Renee, Yo-Yo, and a couple of others known by their first names alone. Of course, Midori, a Japanese-American violinist, is known by her first name alone, too. But unlike these others, she puts only the one name on the program.

Two nights ago, Midori gave a recital in Zankel Hall, the smallish venue downstairs at Carnegie. Why not Carnegie’s main auditorium? Probably because of the program she played: all-contemporary. Even this near-superstar – this former child prodigy who was a guest of Johnny Carson – would probably have trouble filling half of the big auditorium with an all-contemporary program.

Midori presented five different works by five different composers; the works in question were written between 1979 and 2000. Midori has been touring this program all over Japan and the United States. She is indeed a very good friend of the modern composer.

She is also the type to engage in what people call “outreach.” Midori goes into schools, gives interviews, holds panel discussions. She is a bit of an evangelist: for contemporary music, for the violin, and for music at large. A thoughtful and inquisitive woman, she writes her own program notes, as she has done for this contemporary recital.

Midori is essentially one-stop shopping.

She appeared at Zankel Hall with her regular accompanist, the American pianist Robert McDonald. And the two of them started with a piece by Judith Weir, a British composer born in 1954. This was “Music for 247 Strings.” Where do all those strings come from? They are the 243 strings of the piano, plus the four of the violin. The composer wants to emphasize that this is a collaboration between the two instruments, with no domination by either party.

Violinist and pianist skipped through this suite nicely. They are nothing if not collaborators: They played precisely together. Midori sometimes seems to be a third hand of Mr. McDonald. Of course, some pianists have trouble keeping their own two hands together. Midori and Mr. McDonald breathed as one. They were particularly good in their observation of rests.

And I will say of Midori what I always say about her: that she is smart, tasteful, poised, extremely well prepared. The reason one always says this is that Midori always is.

As for Mr. McDonald, he can be counted on to play with diamond-like clarity and intelligence. A solo recital would be welcome from him, one day. If he had any fault on Tuesday night, it was that he was occasionally a bit loud for his partner. (Remember the title of the accompanist Gerald Moore’s memoir? “Am I Too Loud?”)

Isang Yun was a Korean composer whose life stretched throughout the 20th century: from 1917 to 1995. He wrote his Sonata for Violin and Piano in 1991, and it is a dark, dark work, full of storms and sorrow. Midori executed it powerfully. She showed no little technique, having fingers as well as brains. Passagework aside, she sent clear streams of sound through the hall, and her intonation was dead-center. In fact, her intonation was this way all evening long.

The final section of the Yun sonata features soft wailing, almost unbearable in its sadness. Midori handled this with true sympathy. And she and Mr. McDonald ended the piece unassumingly, as if the music would continue, somewhere, once they ceased to play.

Next on the bill was a second British composer, Alexander Goehr, born in 1932. In her program notes, Midori writes that Mr. Goehr “has been described as a ‘politically conscious composer, determined to write music relevant to his age.’ ” Uh-oh. But there is nothing overtly political or “relevant” about his Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 70. It is just – “just” – music.

In this piece, Midori and Mr. Mc-Donald conversed with confidence; sometimes they engaged in more like a joint monologue. I might point out an additional reservation about Mr. McDonald: He sings, a little. Not with his fingers, but with his mouth. It’s one thing if Glenn Gould does this, in the splendid isolation of his recording studio. But how does Midori put up with it?

The Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag (b. 1926) is a man of few notes, a master of economy. And he uses precious few of them in his “Trepezzi per violino e pianoforte” – but those he uses, he aims well. Midori presented a beautiful spareness all through, and she exhibited a first-rate pianissimo. She was barely audible without lapsing into inaudibility.

Mr. Kurtag’s third piece in this little set is disembodied, almost not on this planet. Midori played it like a ghost.

She and Mr. McDonald ended with an important work of Witold Lutoslawski, the Polish composer who, like Isang Sun, lived during a broad swatch of the last century: 1913 to 1994. His Partita is in five movements, all strung together, and Midori gave it full commitment. She was clear, nimble, cat-like – and she often had occasion to pounce. The final movement, Presto, was taken at a surprisingly deliberate tempo. But that was the correct choice: It was terrible in its momentum.

Modestly, Midori played no encore, though the audience was applauding. She seemed to sense that she had given enough. Would it have been better to play a “normal” recital, with a contemporary work or two in the lineup? Maybe. But Midori has her own ideas, about music and her career.

Elsewhere in New York, on this night, some big concerts were underway: the great mezzo Olga Borodina in Carnegie’s main auditorium; Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman in duo recital over at Avery Fisher Hall. Midori was content with modern music at Zankel. She performed a service, too.

Although this was not an eat-your-peas evening. It was an interesting and musical recital, from a very interesting, very musical violinist.