Music review: Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra well-matched with outstanding solo violinist Maria Ioudenitch

Admirers of fine violin playing in Spokane have had much to be grateful for in recent years. In addition to the eagerly awaited appearances of Mateusz Wolski as a soloist, the Spokane Symphony has brought none other than Itzhak Perlman to town, not to mention Glen Dicterow, Augustin Hadelich, Jonathan Beilman and others. In his role as music director of the soon-to-be-rebranded Northwest BachFest, Zuill Bailey has brought a stream of wonderful violinists through the doors of Barrister Winery, many of whom appeared in string quartets and other chamber groups. Kurt Nikkanen and Chee-Yun are perhaps the most notable.

Not to be outdone, however, Kevin Hekmatpanah, as conductor of the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra, continues to bring off what any aficionado of the violin must regard as a series of coups. None other than Midori appeared with his orchestra, becoming one of the few violinists to make sense of the Schumann Violin Concerto, and when the legendary Shlomo Mintz joined Hekmatpanah’s community orchestra to play the Mendelssohn Concerto, we simply rubbed our eyes in disbelief. We will be doing so again on Feb. 10 when Gil Shaham, universally acknowledged as one of our era’s greatest violinists, will appear at the Myrtle Woldson Arts Center auditorium to essay nothing less than Brahms’ Violin Concerto.

To this starry list we can now add Monday night’s appearance with Hekmatpanah and the Gonzaga Orchestra by Maria Ioudenitch, in performances of the Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, Op. 19 (1917) by Prokofiev and the “Carmen Fantasy” (1883) of Pablo De Sarasate. Maria Ioudenitch’s career is still in its first phase, having been marked in 2021 by first-prize awards from three prestigious international competitions. Judging only from what we saw on Monday night, however, it is not too soon to describe her as one of today’s most outstanding performing musicians, and a violinist who can stand comparison with the greatest. In fact, for those familiar with the playing of David Oistrakh, whom many regard to be the greatest violinist of the modern era, it was possible to close one eye and imagine that it was Oistrakh standing on that stage, playing his friend’s D major Concerto, so easily were its difficulties surmounted, and with what beautifully rounded and uniform tone.

Though Ioudenitch received all her training in this country, she and her parents are native to Russia, and it is impossible not to recognize in her playing a deep bond of continuity with the Russian violin tradition, as represented by Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan and, more recently, Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin. Like theirs, Ioudenitch’s playing is characterized not only by virtuosity of the highest order, but by musicality that is profoundly pure and free of egoism. Perhaps because of the extreme technical difficulty of both the Prokofiev and Sarasate works, we had to wait until the solo encore – the first movement of the Fantasie No. 7 of Telemann – to hear her own voice, which was olympian in its purity, but still passionate, shot through with color and tinged with mystery.

While Ioudenitch’s performance may have been the center of attention, she certainly was not the only person onstage. Neither were the pieces she played the only items on the program.

Indeed, she was able to display her gifts as freely as she did only because her onstage colleagues – Hekmatpanah and the Gonzaga Symphony – supported her so well. The Prokofiev Concerto is not only tricky for the soloist, but for the orchestra as well, which must navigate changes in mood and instrumentation often at high speed and with dead-center accuracy in order to remain in synchrony with the violin. This they did with unflappable consistency, while conveying both the beauty and the sarcasm of Prokofiev’s brilliant score.

The orchestra’s principal opportunity to shine took place at the opening of the program, with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s much-loved Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 (1888), a score rich from beginning to end with gorgeous melody and beguiling, imaginative orchestration. All of this was to the fore in Monday’s performance, but what impressed the most was the depth of detail brought to light by Hekmatpanah and his forces; detail often obscured by the rapid tempos and streamlined sonority that were brought into favor and almost hardened into statute by Arturo Toscanini, the most influential musician of the 20th century.

Hekmatpanah has taken what he needs from Toscanini and left it to others to obey his statutes while crafting the rich, enveloping sonority and deft spotlighting of detail on display in his concerts. In his hands, Tchaikovsky’s profusion of melody does not dominate, but rather provides occasion for a constant interplay of wit between the instruments of the orchestra. These details are carefully balanced to be both clear and expressive. Crucially, sufficient time is always allowed for each phrase to make its full contribution to the argument of the piece. Anyone seeking a similar approach on record should turn rather to Bruno Walter or Sergiu Celibidache, rather than to such Toscanini acolytes as George Szell or Erich Leinsdorf, brilliant as they were.