Making Music Mischa Keylin Joins The String Quartet For An Evening Of Violin Pieces And Chamber Works

The Spokane String Quartet Sunday, March 14, 3 p.m., The Met

Those Russians keep coming. Russian violinists have dominated the concert stage this century from the time of Elman and Heifetz through the Oistrakhs (father and son) to today’s Sitkovitsky and Kremer.

Mischa Keylin, a 28-year-old native of St. Petersburg, is one of the latest wave of Russian violinists. Keylin will be the guest artist with the Spokane String Quartet on Sunday in a concert divided between virtuoso violin pieces and 19th-century chamber works.

Keylin and pianist James Edmonds will perform Saint-Saens’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccio,” Wieniawsky’s “Legende” and Tchaikovsky’s “Valse-Scherzo,” all brilliant showpieces of the violin repertoire.

The chamber music will feature Keylin and Edmonds in Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 and Keylin is joining the Spokane String Quartet for Mendelssohn’s Quintet No. 1 in A major.

Keylin began studies with his mother when he was 6. He immigrated to the United States at 9 and studied at the Juilliard School in New York with Dorothy Delay, the woman who has guided the careers of many of today’s greatest violinists.

Keylin was a prize winner in a whole series of international competitions - the Hannover in Germany, the Paganini in Italy, the Sarasate in Spain and the Sigall in Chile. Since his Carnegie Hall debut when he was 11, he has performed in recitals and with orchestras in the U.S., Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.

James Edmonds, who will perform with Keylin on the first part of Sunday’s program, has been a familiar face in Spokane’s musical life for nearly 40 years.

Born in Massachusetts and educated at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, Edmonds taught at Eastern Washington University from 1962 until 1994. Well known for his solo and chamber music performances, Edmonds received the Frederick Douglass Distinguished Scholar Award in 1987 and was made a life member of the Washington State Music Teachers Association in 1996.

On the second half of Sunday’s concert, Keylin will join members of the Spokane String Quartet - violinists Kelly Farris and Jane Blegen, violist Karen Walthinsen and cellist John Marshall - for the Quintet No. 1 in A major by Mendelssohn.

Players in the quartet are members of the Spokane Symphony, and the ensemble is the quartet-in-residence at Eastern Washington University.

In addition to his performance Sunday, Keylin will present a master class for string students and their teachers Friday at 3:30 p.m. in the Music Building Recital Hall at Eastern Washington University’s Cheney campus. The class is free and open to the public.