ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 10, 1996 TAG: 9605100025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Arthur Moreira Lima may be an artist, but he knows how to talk like a diplomat.
"When the Roanoke Sister Cities committee was here in August I met your mayor and all those very sympathetic people," he said. "And I want to commend the uncommon initiative of the city of Roanoke in organizing this concert. It's been noticed in all the papers in these parts."
Moreira Lima, a classical and popular music pianist with a high profile in his native Brazil, will do a recital in Roanoke on May 19 at 4 p.m. at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church. The performance will fund projects of the Florianopolis Committee of Roanoke Valley Sister Cities. Moreira Lima spoke by telephone from his home in Rio de Janeiro, where he spends most of his time when he's not on the road with his 180-concert-per-year schedule.
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers and members of Roanoke Valley Sister Cities traveled to the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina last August to sign documents making Florianopolis the fourth of Roanoke's six sister cities. Shirley Kotheimer, head of the Florianopolis committee, said they happened to meet Moreira Lima while dining with the city's mayor and were impressed by how popular he was.
"At first I had no idea who the man was, but people kept coming up to him and asking for his autograph in the restaurant, and somebody said he's a very famous piano player and everybody in Brazil knows him. And at dinner he was talking to David Bowers, and he made an offer to come here and help us to raise money," Kotheimer said.
When Trans-Brasil Airlines offered to bring the pianist and his wife to Roanoke at no charge and Greene Memorial United Methodist provided a venue, that cemented plans for Sunday's recital of Romantic favorites and Brazilian classics.
Moreira Lima is especially enthusiastic about the chance to help the youngsters at Love's Little Nest, an orphanage in Florianopolis for children whose parents have died of AIDS.
"There are 64 children there now who live on a very tight budget," said Moreira Lima. "We're hoping this partnership will enable us to care for more children than they have there right now."
Kotheimer said that the sister cities committee is talking to Sunday school classes in Roanoke in the hopes that each will "adopt" a child in Love's Little Nest. The Roanokers would get a picture and short biography of each child, and in turn would send letters and small gifts. So far, one Sunday school class, at Windsor Hills United Methodist Church, has volunteered to take on a child at the orphanage.
Other projects include arranging educational exchanges, sending books about Roanoke and Virginia to the Florianopolis public library, purchasing other books, and arranging for Florianopolis city officials to visit Roanoke later this year to study sewage treatment and water facilities.
Arthur Moreira Lima had a long classical music career outside Brazil, living abroad for 20 years, including six in Vienna and eight in the Soviet Union. He is a laureate of both the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the Leeds International Piano Competition in England, and early in his performing career became known as a specialist in the big productions of the 19th-century Romantics. He just completed a stint as soloist with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra on their Latin American tour under American conductor Isaiah Jackson, in which he performed the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1.
But for years, the pianist has remained mostly at home, concentrating on popularizing the musical heritage of his own country, from internationally known composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos to more obscure figures such as Ernesto Nazareth. Moreira Lima also plays and records Brazilian popular music, which helps to account for his renown at home. Most of the second half of his Roanoke recital will focus on Brazilian music.
"One of the things I like to do best is tour. I love to do tours deep into the hinterland [of Brazil], where I do open-air concerts. I travel with a big truck that has many pianos in it. We have many cities from around 40,000 people to about 100,000, and many of these have good musical traditions. This is where I love to go, and when I'm in a concert I try to explain to the people just what I am playing," Moreira Lima said.
Sunday's recital will include five song transcriptions by Franz Liszt, Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 3, the piano-solo version of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and music of Carlos Gomes, Villa-Lobos and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. A donation of $10 will be asked of each concertgoer.
In concert: Pianist Arthur Moreira Lima will perform May 19 at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church in Roanoke. Tickets are $10. Call 562-0356.
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Arthur Moreira Limaby CNB