Spokane Native Returns to Symphony as Violinist

Yvette Kraft’s return to the Spokane Symphony brought her musical story full circle. She first encountered the orchestra as a 4-year-old in the early 2000s, when the players onstage—especially the violinists—captured her attention. Her interest led her parents to arrange lessons, and she became an early student of Mateusz Wolski after he had taken on the orchestra’s concertmaster position.

About two decades later, Kraft joined Wolski onstage during Saturday night’s Masterworks 3 program, “The Pastoral.” She performed Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto while Wolski led the violin section. Guest conductor Sameer Patel, who conducts the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and directs the San Diego Youth Symphony, guided the program’s two performances.

The concert opened with Tchaikovsky’s Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, giving principal players Clinton Webb, Chip Phillips, Keith Thomas, Joanna Wu and Colleen McElroy featured moments. Kraft’s Sibelius performance emphasized the concerto’s shifting musical ideas with a spontaneous, reflective approach. Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony filled the second half, moving through scenes of fields, birdsong and brooks toward a vision of nature’s divine presence. Patel’s consistent tempo brought definition to the program, though the review found that same steadiness sometimes reduced the expressive changes in Beethoven’s closing movements.