Concert was enchanting, lovable gift

The stores are selling Valentine’s flowers and candy. So it seemed quite all right that the Spokane String Quartet delivered a handsome Valentine’s package at the Bing Crosby Theater on Sunday with a concert that ended with one of the most romantic works in the quartet literature along with two less frequently played quartets before intermission.

The three regular members of the quartet – violinist Tana Bland, violist Jeanette Wee-Yang and cellist Helen Byrne – were joined by Misha Rosenker as the ensemble’s visiting first violinist. This has been a year of visitors in the first violinist’s chair as the founding first violinist gave himself a well-deserved sabbatical leave after 27 years of leading the quartet.

Rosenker subtly altered the quartet’s tone, not for better or for worse, just different. Sunday’s sound seemed sweeter to my ears, more “Russian,” if you think in terms of national “schools” of string playing. That sound beautifully fit all three works on the program.

The opening work was Joseph Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet. Its official name is String Quartet in D major, Op. 64, No. 5. Haydn never ceases being astonishing, and this quartet is one of his greatest masterpieces. Its nickname comes from the soaringly lyrical first violin solo at the beginning. From there, though, the four players followed the composer on some striking harmonic adventures, some laughingly funny rhythmic dislocations to a finale that was a wild ride of perpetual motion.

Haydn is sometimes viewed patronizingly as a genial, fatherly figure. Well, don’t believe it. He’s a trickster who loves a good joke, musical and otherwise, and Sunday’s performance reveled in those tricks.

Dmitri Shostakovich was arguably the greatest writer of string quartets in the 20th century. Well, OK, there was Bartok, too. But audiences rarely get a chance to hear Shostakovich’s early quartets. The Spokane Quartet presented an all-too-sparse audience with a chance to enjoy the Russian master’s First Quartet. The first three movements have a nostalgic quality – a Russian Tea Room melancholy – that shows Shostakovich’s heritage from Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. Only in the finale does the dissonant bite of his later style bubble to the surface.

I was particularly moved by Wee-Yang’s playing of the folk-like viola melodies in the second movement and all four players’ fidgety busyness in the muted third movement.

Following intermission, Alexander Borodin’s highly romantic Second Quartet showed up as dependable as a heart-shaped box of chocolates, and fully as irresistible. There was the temptation to sing along as themes borrowed from the score of “Kismet” rolled out. That Borodin could write good tunes.

Byrne’s songful, soulful cello playing in the Nocturne, later echoed in the higher register of Rosenker’s violin, showed why this movement made it to the Hit Parade of chamber music. Then there were spooky, vibrato-less octaves that introduce the finale answered by ominous notes from the viola and cello.

Not only was Sunday’s concert a lovable pre-Valentine’s gift, it was a spirit-lifting rebuke to the gray drizzle outside the theater.