Extraordinary talent was on display as guest artist YunJung Park joined Spokane String Quartet in advanced program Sunday

It takes only a glance at the program of Sunday’s concert by the Spokane String Quartet at the Fox to see that change is afoot. No member of the quartet appears onstage during the first item of the program; only one is involved in the second item, while the group’s first violin, Mateusz Wolski, takes no part at all in the second half of the concert. This flexibility in participation is not what one expects, but it can bear real benefits if handled as imaginatively as it was on Sunday afternoon. It points the way to programming of wider scope and variety than the quartet’s devoted following has ever seen before.

In this case, it allowed for an exciting showcase for the extraordinary talents of the afternoon’s guest artist, YunJung Park, who appeared most recently at Gonzaga University, accompanying cellist Kevin Hekmatpanah in a daunting program of all three violin sonatas by Johannes Brahms, arranged for cello. In this instance, the program allowed us to see her, first in a solo sonata by Joseph Haydn composed in 1788, then accompanying Wolski in Brahms’ Third Sonata for Violin and Piano in D minor of 1888, and finally in Robert Schumann’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Opus 47 of 1842. Spokane music lovers owe a debt of gratitude to Laurie Brunette, whose generosity (perhaps “commitment” is more accurate) will underwrite all of the guest artists in this season of the Spokane String Quartet.

Throughout the program, Park brought to each of three quite different composers’ work precisely the tone, touch and phrasing that they required. Every note in the Haydn C major Sonata (Volume 16 No. 48 in the Haydn catalogue) sparkled with character and vitality, even if it appeared in a shower of 32nd notes. Every sudden, surprising shift in speed, volume and harmony, so typical of Haydn’s endlessly engaging and delightful style, was rendered with nonchalant perfection. Though Park remained within the tonal and stylistic limits of the Classical era, the effect of the music was as vital and expressive as it would have been had she been improvising on the spot.

Shortly after her performance of the Haydn Sonata, Park returned to the stage accompanied by Wolski, leader of the quartet and concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony. If any listener had at this point formed a view of Park as a pianist limited to producing clear, transparent textures within strict rhythmic guidelines – the sort of playing appropriate to Haydn – what were they to make of the torrent of late-romantic orchestral color that poured from the piano from the outset of the Brahms D minor Sonata?

Both Schumann and Brahms were pianists of professional caliber, and the instrument figures in many of their most important compositions. Though Schumann was Brahms’ mentor and close friend, the two men wrote for the piano in different ways. While Schumann’s writing for the piano focuses on small, exquisite details and employs repetition of short rhythmic and melodic motifs, many of Brahms’ works call for a more orchestral sonority and develop their ideas over long spans of time.

Park so completely captured these differences in her collaborations in the Sonata of Brahms and the Quartet of Schumann that, had one closed one’s eyes, one would have thought they were performed by two different pianists … at two different pianos! Such total union with a composer’s intentions is rare indeed, as it requires unflagging control over hundreds of tiny decisions about fingering, pedaling and arm pressure as they fly by in the course of performance.

The playing of the members of the Spokane String Quartet displayed a similar sort of commitment to an authentic realization of the composers’ intentions, rather than to a display of their own unique personalities. The Brahms D minor Violin Sonata received a famous recording in 1950 by two world famous virtuosi, Nathan Milstein, violin, and Vladimir Horowitz, piano, that has influenced interpreters ever since to view the work as a tempestuous conflict between two domineering forces. The approach suggested by Wolski and Park was significantly different: “Ask not what the score can do for you; ask rather what you can do for the score.” The impact on the Brahms Sonata was remarkable, reducing the hysterics and melodrama and restoring the ambivalent interplay of light and shade that is quintessentially Brahmsian. Their marvelous rendition not only allowed us to perceive connections with Brahms’ other works for violin and piano, both in major keys, but with Brahms’ works in other forms, such as his Second Symphony and German Requiem.

A similar musicianly humility characterized the performance that closed the program, of the Schumann E-flat Piano Quartet. It was written, as was typical of Schumann, not calmly, over a period of time, but in a feverish burst of creativity that also produced a flood of other works of chamber music: quartets, sonatas and a piano quintet. Perhaps because of this, the level of the composer’s inspiration in the quartet we heard is somewhat uneven, presenting the performers with the challenge of portraying as a coherent musical statement a work that threatens to lapse from time to time into incoherence.

The first movement, for example, contains several passages of repetitive material extending over quite a few measures that can easily wear the listener’s patience thin. On the contrary, the collaboration of Park with violinist Amanda Howard-Phillips, violist Jeanette Wee-Yang and cellist Helen Byrne managed dynamic levels so expressively and maintained such transparency of texture as to dispel any danger of monotony.

The best-known portion of the Schumann Piano Quartet is the third movement, which contains one of the loveliest melodies by this, one of history’s most gifted melodists. It is voiced first by the cello, before being passed to the violin.

Byrne not only presented the melody with the utmost purity, but also with restraint, resisting the temptation to grandstand, but preferring rather to position this first statement as preparation for what was to come. Likewise,Howard-Phillips took up the melody not as a solo turn, but as a chance to explore it in duet with the cello, to which Schumann assigned some gorgeous harmonies that could easily have been overwhelmed by a more self-centered violinist. As a result of this collaborative spirit and skill, maintained as both Park and Wee-Yang entered into the development, the wonder of Schumann’s melody extended throughout the whole length of the movement, rather than being localized in a series of star turns.

We are thus reminded of how fortunate we are to have in our midst a group of musicians imbued with the spirit of chamber music, rather than relying on an ad hoc group of players taking a break from the pressures of a solo career.