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

DATE: FRIDAY, July 6, 1990                   TAG: 9007060423
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GARTH NEWEL OPENER A FEAST FOR LOVERS OF CHAMBER MUSIC

This summer's Garth Newell Chamber Music Series got off to a promising start Saturday evening in Hot Springs. The Bath County festival is still not widely known, but for Virginia chamber music lovers who have discovered it, it's the end of the rainbow.

One testimony to the high standards of musicianship at Garth Newell is the fact that two violinists associated with the festival, Nicky Danielson and Darrell Starke, are competing in the current Tchaikovsky Violin Competition in Moscow. This summer marks the second year that Saturday music has been added to the schedule, and the weekend concerts will continue through Sept. 2.

The gorgeous Alleghany scenery and cool mountain breezes weren't the only attractions for Saturday's crowd. In addition to the concert's Handel, Barber and Brahms, there were freshly baked scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream for the concertgoers, who represented half a dozen states and at least two foreign countries. The Herter Hall music shed - a converted horse barn with surprisingly good acoustics - was three-quarters filled for the inaugural concert.

This concert was notable for other reasons as well. The art song has been rather thinly represented at Garth Newell since the festival's founding in the mid-'70s, but festival organizer Luca di Cecco has booked three vocalists for this season, two of whom performed Saturday. And Arlene di Cecco, who after the concert joked that she has played enough "second fiddle" in her career, was first violinist throughout the evening.

The festival's core ensemble is the Garth Newell Trio, which consists of Luca and Arlene di Cecco on cello and violin and Paul Nitsch on piano or harpsicord. They were supplemented by other guest artists in various combinations, including violinist Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio and violist Evelyn Grau.

Saturday's concert began with an unscheduled Handel trio sonata for two violins, cello and harpsicord. The work was followed by three Handel arias from lyric soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, who was accompanied by Sant'Ambrogio on violin, with cello and harpsicord. Lamoreaux is familiar to Washington concertgoers, where she appears frequently at the Kennedy Center and with the Folger Consort. Her voice has a warm lower end and her upper range is clear without brittleness. Her control is such that she managed to make Handel's difficultornamentation sound natural, if not easy.

Next was American composer Samuel Barber's setting of the Matthew Arnold poem "Dover Beach" for baritone and string quartet. The soloist was Robert Kennedy, another familiar name from the Washington/Baltimore arts scene. A problem with this piece is that too many vocalists, responding perhaps to Arnold's melancholy fin-de-siecle tone, sing it in a wan, even wimpy fashion. Kennedy's reading was thoughtful yet virile and to my mind corresponded better to the poem's meaning.

The final half of the concert consisted of one of the peaks of the 19th-century chamber music, the great Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, by Johannes Brahms. The Garth Newell Trio was joined by violist Grau and Sant'Ambrogio on second violin, and the result was a strong performance. The first movement was no better than adequate, but the performance jelled in the first bars of the second movement and from there on, the results were memorable. There was beautifully expressed emotion in the second movement, and true nobility in the third.

This work is not a showpiece for cello, but Luca di Cecco's playing was particularly fine. Repeated exposures to di Cecco's playing reveal a musician who is the antithesis of the showman, but who nevertheless possesses great technical and emotional resources. If the great Russian pianists played their instruments like entire symphony orchestras, di Cecco is worth at least a full string section when he encounters great music. This was not technically flawless Brahms, but the standing ovation at the end came from an audience that had gotten its money's worth.

This Saturday's concert will feature music for harpsicord, strings and winds, and scheduled for Sunday are piano trios by Mozart and Brahms and a sonata for violin and piano by Beethoven.

For information about the Garth Newell series, call 839-5018.

by CNB