Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 13, 1994 TAG: 9407150059
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON Special to the Roanoke Times & World-News
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gorecki, whose phenomenally popular ``Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'' has received even pop station airplay in England and America in recent years, was represented by his ``Three Pieces in Old Style.'' Seasoned with a pinch of dissonance, the three movements had the religious feeling that is so frequently a characteristic of Gorecki and got an adequate rendering from the small chamber orchestra.
Harpist Stacy Shames was the soloist in Claude Debussy's pagan-sounding ``Danses sacrees et profanes'' for harp and strings. Shames is a beautiful player with an intuitive command of her difficult instrument's resources of timbre and dynamics. As concertgoer Skip Smith of Roanoke remarked, ``I don't even like the harp but this gal has made me a believer.'' The many passages of parallel chromatic chord sequences on the harp give this two-movement work the aura of ancient Greece.
As Shames and the chamber orchestra performed the Debussy, there occurred one of those events that have given a characteristic flavor to this little festival and that have kept people coming back for the more than two decades of its existence. A brief but violent thunderstorm rumbled through the valley, whirling leaves into the sky outside the Herter Hall Music Shed. In a few seconds the bright summer day became intensely dark as Shames and the players continued with the Debussy in the suddenly shadowy concert hall. The confluence of the dramatic natural show out of doors and Debussy's music, redolent of fauns and satyrs, made for a mystical experience.
Next was George Frederick Handel's Harp Concerto in B-flat, Op. 4, No. 6, a delicately scored work that is sometimes heard with a chamber organ as the solo instrument. It received a satisfactory performance, though it would have been more impressive had the Garth Newell Chamber Players contained the recorder players the composer called for, or at least the customary oboes.
After the intermission interval it was the Concerto in A minor for Two Violins, Strings and Continuo of Antonio Vivaldi. Soloists were Benedict Goodfriend of the Kandinsky Trio and Susan Walker, as first and second violins respectively. Goodfriend played seemingly effortlessly and with his customary big sound, though he was careful to remain, so to speak, a team player with the somewhat less accomplished Walker. The soloists earned whoops and shouts of approval at the finish.
Ending Saturday's concert was a work long mistakenly attributed to Pergolesi. The Concerto Grosso in G scheduled next is actually the work of Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, a fact established only in 1979 after some musicological detective work. Laid out in the ``church sonata'' movement sequence of slow-fast-slow-fast, the piece began with a stately and serious movement that led directly to a second-movement fugue and ended with a brisk finale.
Though intended for a small orchestra, the work has four independent violin parts plus viola, cello and basso continuo. So far as I could determine all six string parts were represented in a performance that was rich and full for the small numbers of the players.
Garth Newel Chamber Players: Garth Newel Music Center, Warm Springs. Tickets are $12; $6 for under 18 years old. 839-5018.
by CNB