String Quartet Delivers Stirring Season Finale

Mon., June 7, 1999

Travis Rivers Correspondent

Spokane String Quartet Friday, June 4, The Met

The Spokane String Quartet furnished spirited performances of three quartet classics by Beethoven, Dvorak and Shostakovich on Friday at The Met. Sometimes this group demonstrates more respect than involvement in the music it plays. But Friday’s season finale was filled with compelling vitality.

It was a very good concert attended by too few people. Those who were there were appropriately enthusiastic.

Beethoven’s early C minor Quartet from Op. 18 was an experimental one for the composer, and the Spokane Quartet players - violinists Kelly Farris and Jane Blegen, violist Karen Walthinsen and cellist John Marshall - made it sound like the adventure Beethoven intended. The opening Allegro found all four leaning into the beat like sailors leaning into a gale.

There were a few skittish moments in the beginning of the Andante scherzoso, but order was quickly restored so everyone could enjoy the coy fugue with which Beethoven replaced the slow movement one expects here.

The players relished the humor of all Beethoven’s “misplaced” accents of the Menuetto. And they took a rashly effective fast tempo in the gypsy-rondo finale.

Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 6 begins as though this 20th-century Russian master suddenly thought he was Haydn. After a classically simple beginning, this quartet wanders back into the modern world. One of Friday evening’s memorable experiences was the touching lament Shostakovich constructed over a repeated cello melody. The players’ intensity here made this movement the emotional highlight of the concert for me.

Dvorak’s Quartet in G major, Op. 106, occupied a special place in the heart of the composer. While in the midst of a yearlong struggle to complete his Quartet in A-flat, Dvorak wrote this one in a few weeks. He was pleased with this work, and the Spokane Quartet showed why. It was a mosaic of everything he loved about his native Bohemia (the present-day Czech Republic).

The work is long and tiring. Thus, the players could be forgiven some lapses of intonation. But their performance Friday bustled with the rural and urban Czech sounds and scenes Dvorak loved: folk songs, country dances, prayers, the sounds of trains (the composer was an avid train spotter), echoes of Wagner and Beethoven (Dvorak adored their music) and much else.

This performance marked the last appearance of Karen Walthinsen as the Spokane String Quartet’s violist before she leaves for Europe to complete a doctorate and continue her performances of baroque music. Her vitality and intelligence made a wonderful contribution to the ensemble and the community. She will be missed.

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