
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990                   TAG: 9003202548
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GUITAR TRIO PLEASES OLIN HALL AUDIENCE

The Amsterdam Guitar Trio, highly promoted RCA recording artists and one of the hot ensembles in chamber music today, performed Monday night in Roanoke College's Olin Hall. Continuing the Roanoke Valley Chamber Music Society's 10th-anniversary season, the players showed up in their trademark rockabilly-punk outfits and delivered a polished program of transcriptions and works written especially for them.

A guitar trio is not the most promising chamber ensemble imaginable. Unlike the standard string quartet or piano trio with their richly contrasting timbres and textures, the sound of three identical guitars can degenerate into a homogeneous wash, and the instruments lack sustain. But the Amsterdam Guitar Trio showed that creative writing and arranging can solve most problems inherent in such a combination.

The group, which has now released four CDs, consists of Johann Dorrestein, Helenus de Rijke and Olga Franssen. For this tour, Franssen was replaced by Edith Leerkes. In their first piece, a transcription of Debussy's "Petite Suite," one guitarist took the left-hand piano part, another the right-hand melody line, and the third filled in with arpeggios or full chords. The trio does its own transcriptions.

At its best, this group achieves a surprisingly orchestral fullness. Especially successful in this regard were the first and final movements of the transcription of Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony." The group has such a surfeit of technique that technical problems recede before fine questions of interpretation. They exploited the guitar's full range of expression, from harmonics to damped strings, and a tonal palette that ranged from the lush to a frigid near-the-bridge tone.

The AGT has commissioned dozens of original works, and one such was "Pipa," of the Japanese composer Akira Nishimura. Premiered last year, the work has a hypnotic, minimalist quality with a nine-stroke-per-beat tremolo that lasts from beginning to end. Also new was "Two Men and a Lady" of Dutch composer Chiel Meijering, which is the title track from the group's newest CD. Beginning with an attractive erotic languor, it soon reached a frenzied tempo and was difficult to follow.

After a standing ovation and shouts of "Bravo!" from the Olin Hall crowd, the Amsterdam Guitar Trio encored with a transcription of two movements from Luigi Boccherini's "Del Fandango" guitar quintet.

by CNB