Music Selections Varied For String Quartet’S Close

Spokane String Quartet Friday, 8 p.m., The Met

Planning a concert is like arranging a dinner. The menu needs variety. In a concert planned more than a year ago, members of the Spokane String Quartet thought their menu for the season finale was the perfect musical meal - a great classic to lead off, a tart modern to cleanse the palate and a dramatic romantic conclusion.

The Spokane String Quartet - violinists Kelly Farris, Jane Blegen, violist Karen Walthinsen and cellist John Marshall - will play the final concert of the group’s 1998-99 season at The Met Friday. The program comprises an early quartet by Beethoven, a middle-period quartet by Shostakovich and A late quartet by Dvorak.

The original plan was to open with Beethoven’s Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No. 2, followed by Shostakovich’s Sixth Quartet in G major, Op. 101, and ending with Dvorak’s big Quartet in G major, Op. 106.

Walthinsen, who is the program annotator for the group, points out, “Shostakovich didn’t write his first string quartet until he was 31. But once he began writing quartets, he proceeded to create one of the largest sequences in the genre by any single composer since Beethoven.”

It was Beethoven who presented the problem. Choosing a work that would be companionable with both Shostakovich and Dvorak on Friday’s program was not easy.

“Originally we had programmed Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 2, to open the program,” Farris says. “But about a month ago, we realized that we’d had three quartets all in the key of G major. Besides that, the Beethoven we’d picked out was a gentle piece like the Shostakovich Sixth.”

That was the equivalent of a chef realizing that all the dishes on a meal were the same color. A last-minute change was in order.

“So, for greater contrast,” Farris says, “we decided to do Op. 18, No. 4, which is more intense, something like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and it’s in Beethoven `intense’ key, C minor.”

Friday’s finale is Dvorak’s Quartet in G major, Op. 106. “What I hear in the slow movement of this quartet is a big opera, the spirit of the texture and spirit of Wagner is there.”

For Walthinsen, Friday’s performance will be a farewell. In addition to being the quartet’s violist for the past two seasons and the group’s program annotator, Walthinsen is a violinist in the Spokane Symphony and an instructor of music history at Eastern Washington University. Walthinsen leaves for Europe this summer to continue research and training in her specialty, early music performance.

Next season, Walthinsen will be replaced by Claire Keeble, who was the Spokane String Quartet’s violist from 1979 to 1995.