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

DATE: FRIDAY, July 21, 1995                   TAG: 9507210018
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By Seth Williamson Special to the Roanoke Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FIRST CONCERT WAS WARMLY RECEIVED

It was a specimen Saturday afternoon in the Herter Hall Music Shed last weekend. The Garth Newel Chamber Orchestra and various soloists turned in the kind of performance that has built a regular following over the years: a solidly musical but not world-beating rendition of familiar repertoire for an audience of about 125.

Phillip Spurgeon, conducting sans baton a la Leopold Stokowski, led the chamber orchestra through a reverent traversal of the familiar (but misleadingly named) "Air on the G String" from Bach's Suite No. 3 in D Major.

Violinists Benedict Goodfriend and Nicolas Danielson split solo duties in Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." Goodfriend was spirited but not as precise as he customarily is in "Spring" and "Summer." Danielson was terrific in "Fall" and "Winter," tearing through chromatic runs at blinding speed, and earning a standing ovation and shouts of bravo when he finished.

The big treat of the day was the "Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5" by Heitor Villa-Lobos. The work for soprano and eight cellos has been arranged in a seemingly blue million different versions, and it is uncommon to hear it precisely the way Villa-Lobos wrote it. But even though Luca di Cecco joked that "it's hard to find eight cellists who will play together," that was how they performed it Saturday afternoon, with soprano Susan Bender floating effortlessly above the dark string textures.

It was a gorgeous performance that spotlighted Bender's ability to sing at a vanishingly small dynamic level while maintaining perfect control, and it deserved every bit of the enthusiastic applause it garnered.

|- SETH WILLIAMSON.

by CNB