Spokane String’s Presentation Pleasing, Powerful

Spokane String Quartet Tuesday, March 10, The Met

French music was the focus of the Spokane String Quartet’s presentation Tuesday night at The Met. The performance amounted to a violin and piano recital with a bunch of strings thrown in for a big effect at the end.

Guest violinist Andor Toth and pianist Stephanie Leon Shames carried the program in a major way. The pair took the entire first half on their shoulders with Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Saint-Saens and Debussy. The two looked and played like they meant business: Their confidence and experience cleared the way for the music to take the spotlight from the very first notes.

Spokane has heard Toth before, and I was happy to hear him again. He is an exciting player who obviously does his homework. None of the pieces on the program lends itself to the electric performances Tuesday’s audience received with a mere dusting off of the music the week before the show.

Toth not only had the notes, but had clear ideas of how to get inside them and give the music life. His technique began with a big sound that was brightened or altered to extremes to make the mood of the piece.

His musical partner matched his concentration, intensity and devotion to the music measure for measure. It was the first time I have heard Shames, and what a find. The killer piano parts melted away to musical phrases under her fingers.

Shames’ chamber music sense was impeccable. Her collaboration seemed intuitive, although obviously well-honed, and she cut through for the big keyboard moments without hesitation.

The Saint-Saens, which opened the concert, was focused and gripping from the outset. At the end, the screaming scales in both the violin and piano were nailed to the wall.

The Chausson Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, which constituted the second half of the performance, was huge chamber music. A quartet plus two might have been enough, but a seventh was added.

The Chausson is a lush romantic work with long, unwinding melodies over shifting chromatic harmonies. In the relative sense, it doesn’t require much of the five-member quartet; it places most of the burden, musically and technically, on the piano and solo violin.

Shames and Toth played it that way, as if it were a piece of Greek theater with the main dialogue being supported by a chorus. As such, it was quite pleasing and powerful.