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

DATE: TUESDAY, August 3, 1993                   TAG: 9308030162
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GARTH NEWEL CHAMBER OPENS ITS THIRD DECADE

So said Luca Di Cecco on Saturday afternoon a few minutes before the Garth Newel Chamber Players began an eclectic program of Dvorak, Glinka, Chopin and Tchaikovsky.

Di Cecco is director of the Garth Newel Music Center in Warm Springs, whose 20th-anniversary summer chamber music festival started a month ago.

"We thought if we managed to go five years we would have accomplished something," said the cellist, who got an uncharacteristic day off Saturday and was able to hear the music from amid an audience of about 75 concertgoers.

Instead, the festival is beginning its third decade in the mountains of Bath County and is about 40 percent of the way toward a $5 million capital campaign goal.

Di Cecco's music philosophy, which has resolutely avoided what he calls "the star system" in favor of good but lesser-known players, has seemingly paid off with a small but loyal core audience who travel to Bath County every summer from many states and a few foreign countries.

Actually, Saturday's performance was not entirely without stars. Legendary American pianist Leo Smit performed in one major work and contributed two short solo performances. Smit, who has been associated with Garth Newel for some time, made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1939 and was a friend of both Bartok and Copland.

Two little-known works by famous composers headlined Saturday's concert. The Quintet in G for two violins, Viola, Cello and Double Bass has a deceptively high opus number at Op. 77 and chronologically is closer to Op. 18.

It got a spirited performance from a quintet which included first violinist Nicolas Danielson, second violinist Benedict Goodfriend of the Kandinsky Trio, cellist Peter Steffens, violist Evelyn Grau, and double bassist Mark Bernat. Bernat in particular is an excellent musician and one of the finest performers heard on his instrument at Garth Newel in years.

The first and final movements of this rarely heard piece could easily be transcriptions of 19th-century opera overtures, and the addition of Bernat's sensitive double bass playing in fact gave the whole a symphonic sound. Especially lovely were the singing lines of the slow third movement, marked poco andante.

Mikhail Glinka's Sextet in E-flat, for two violins, viola, cello, double bass and piano was a bigger rarity even than the Dvorak. Originally titled the "Gran Sestetto originale," the work is frankly undistinguished and for long stretches sounds like second-rate Bellini. It reminded me of a theory of violinist Benedict Goodfriend, who quite by chance was playing during the piece: Obscure pieces are usually obscure for good reason. Call it "Goodfriend's Law."

The Garth Newell players gave it a good shot, however, sounding most impressive in the middle-movement serenade. Goodfriend, who switched to first violin for this piece, cranked up his patented big sound and did his best to lift the work above its generally mediocre plane.

Leo Smit's playing had sloppy moments during the Glinka, though his address to the keyboard is remarkable for a musician in his 80s. He played broadly Romantic versions of a Chopin mazurka and his own transcription of Tchaikovsky's song "Endless Love" immediately before intermission, with a rather too generous application of the pedal for my taste.

Weekend concerts will continue at Garth Newell through September 5, with Saturday performances beginning at 4 p.m. and Sunday performances beginning at 3 pm. Admission is $12 per person, with performance information available at 839-5018.