Keylin Caps Season Finale For Quartet

Thu., June 8, 2000

Ann Le Bar Correspondent

The Spokane String Quartet’s final concert this season will be a reunion of sorts. The quartet will be joined Friday at The Met by Russian violinist Misha Keylin and Spokane-born pianist Janine Knox in a program reminiscent of Keylin’s dazzling Spokane debut last year.

The audience also will be reunited with some beloved music of the 19th century, including several original arrangements that are less frequently performed these days.

Keylin, who made a well-received Carnegie Hall debut at age 11, does not shy away from association with the term “virtuoso,” not even the “flamboyant, fast fingers” kind.

But the 30-year-old musician acknowledges that there is more to virtuosity than fast fingers. Keylin looks forward to returning to Spokane, remembering the challenge he felt last year to meet the expectations of the string quartet’s experienced musicians.

“Honestly,” he says, “chamber music involves more work. In a group, individual virtuosity must fit (with the whole).”

As with last year’s concert, the first half of the program will feature virtuoso pieces for piano and violin. Beethoven originally composed his “Spring” Sonata, in F major, for “violin with piano accompaniment.” Knox, a former Eastern Washington University student now studying in New York City, will be the real soloist in the piece, Keylin notes.

Keylin and Knox will also do Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement of the “Rondo” from Mozart’s Haffner Symphony, and Dvorak’s “Romance,” Op. 11. They will perform Dvorak’s original version for violin and piano, rather than the more familiar one for violin and orchestra.

The showstopper in the first half of the program is Niccolo Paganini’s “La Campanella.” Paganini deliberately composed solo parts so difficult that he was the only living musician who could perform them. “La Campanella” is no exception, and as a result, it has since been rewritten in an easier version. But Keylin will perform the original, fireworks version, “with all of the hard parts left in.”

The second half of Friday’s program will be dedicated to Brahms’ Sextet in B-flat major. Helen Byrne, assistant principal cellist of the Spokane Symphony, will join Keylin and string quartet members Kelly Farris, Jane Ayer Blegen, Claire Keeble and John Marshall.

This sidebar appeared with the story: IN CONCERT Spokane String Quartet

With Misha Keylin (below), violin, and Janine Knox, piano, Friday, 8 p.m., at The Met. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $6 for students, available at the door, at Hoffman Music or through G&B (325-SEAT or 800-325-SEAT).

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