Colorful Experience Spokane String Quartet Deftly Paints Musical Themes Of Passion With Challenging Pieces

Spokane String Quartet with Cynthia Kirkman Sunday, March 26, The Met

Concerts come in different colors, like the seasons. The Spokane String Quartet, with soprano Cynthia Kirkman, pitted the blue and violet of passionate song music against Sunday afternoon’s spring environment of pale yellows. The result was a gorgeous, ineffable experience.

To put words on it, there were three pieces, all of them challenging in different ways. Their environments ranged from the perennial musical hothouse of Vienna to the breathtaking popular landscape of 20th-century Brazil.

Kirkman and the String Quartet began the concert with Heitor Villa-Lobos’ two-movement “Bachianas brasilieras” No. 5, arranged by Fabio Mechetti and Karen Walthinsen.

Villa-Lobos originally scored the piece for soprano and eight cellos. But Sunday’s performance, in which the quartet was joined by bassist Roma Vayspapir, showed that the piece is just as compelling when its sounds are spread across a wider tonal range encompassing the high notes of violas and violins.

Portuguese is an uncommon language for art singers, but Kirkman’s performance was beautifully articulated. Her powerful, operatic voice was at times a bit too much like blackberry syrup - sweet and wavering where taut and soaring were called for.

The second movement, called “Dansa” by VillaLobos, demands rhythmic precision in the style of Brazilian folk songs and dances. The slow tempo of Sunday’s performance meant that some of that feel was lost.

By contrast, the group’s technique and interpretations were perfectly matched to the Viennese, Schoenberg and Schubert.

Arnold Schoenberg wrote his String Quartet No. 2 in the midst of a marital crisis - monthslong abandonment by his wife and the eventual suicide of her lover. The work is Schoenberg’s highly personal exploration of disorienting grief and a plea for transcendence.

Its first two movements, for string quartet alone, contrast frantic energy and wrenching dissonances with occasional, brief moments of clarity, even humor. In the second, Schoenberg mocked his own condition by introducing the folk tune of “Ach, du lieber Augustin” and playing with its plodding, goofy aspect.

Though the String Quartet’s playing in these first movements was hesitant where it needed to be muscular, that hesitancy was gone in the last two movements. Kirkman joined the group, singing the texts by Austrian poet Stefan George that Schoenberg chose to express the spiritual side of his grief.

Kirkman’s remarkable technique, beautiful sound and enormous vocal range made this notoriously difficult music seem effortless.

Schoenberg’s last movement must be one of the most significant in all 20th-century music. It is astral, with strings and voice creating the otherworldly feeling of watching falling stars that are falling - up!

The concert’s second half was dedicated to Franz Schubert’s magnificent Quartet in D Minor, known as “Death and the Maiden.”

The Spokane String Quartet’s performance was flawless. It defies description, except to say that if you chose Sunday afternoon’s pale yellows over music’s blues and violets, it was your loss.