On a romantic note

The Spokane Symphony will continue the celebration of Valentine’s Day with a Casual Classics performance Friday at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox.
The orchestra’s concertmaster, Mateusz Wolkski, is the evening’s soloist in Henryk Wieniawski’s Concerto No. 2.
Associate Conductor Morihiko Nakahara will lead a program that also includes works by Wagner and Haydn.
The Polish-born Wolski is in his first season as the Spokane Symphony’s concertmaster, and also serves as first violinist in the Spokane String Quartet.
Though symphonygoers have heard him in the numerous solos a concertmaster performs from the first chair of the orchestra’s violins, Friday’s concert marks his debut as a violinist standing in front of the orchestra.
Wolkski will play the Violin Concerto No. 2 by his countryman, Henryk Wieniawski (often known by the French version of his given name, Henri).
Wieniawski was not only a prolific composer for the violin, he was one of the greatest violinists of the second half of the 19th century. In 1872, he was among the first generation of European virtuosos to visit the United States.
Nakahara will open Friday’s concert with Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” the composer’s love gift to his wife, Cosima.
It was a combination Christmas present (it was first performed Dec. 25, 1870), birthday gift (Cosima turned 33 that year on the 24th) and celebration of their 6-month-old son, Siegfried.
The piece is based on themes of the last scene of Wagner’s recently completed opera “Siegfried” and includes musical quotations from that opera and “Die Walkure.”
Friday’s concert closes with Haydn’s Symphony No. 83 (“The Bear”), one of six symphonys Haydn composed for a concert series in Paris in 1786.
The nickname derives from a theme of the finale. Its drone and bagpipe tune supposedly resembled those accompanying the dancing bears popular as street entertainment in Haydn’s time.
As is traditional at the Casual Classics concerts, Nakahara will give spoken program notes for each of the works on the program, illustrated by examples of the music played by the orchestra.
The symphony is offering a special Valentine’s Day package which includes two glasses of wine (with keepsake commemorative glasses) and a single, long-stemmed red rose, for $15.
The package must be ordered in advance through the symphony box office, (509) 624-1200.