Cellist Janos Starker: In Mid-Tour, a Remembrance

Decisive as always, Janos Starker specifies the kind of benefit concert he will play in Santa Barbara next month.

“This will be a concert, not a memorial--a time for music, not for lamenting,” he says.

The occasion--emphatically “not a happy one,” the veteran cellist reminds us--is the recital Starker and his musical partner, pianist Shigeo Nericki, are scheduled to give in Abravanel Hall at the Music Academy of the West, Oct. 26.

The event will benefit the Phoenix Center, an organization formed recently as “An Educational and Restorative Memorial of the Painted Cave Fire,” which devastated Santa Barbara in late June.

Illustrator Andrea Lang Gurka, the one person who died in that fire, was the child of Starker’s long-time friends, restaurateur George Lang and actress Doe Lang (they are no longer married). According to a close friend of the cellist’s, Starker and Nericki are donating their services, as well as all traveling expenses, to the event.

Starker pointedly chooses--in a telephone conversation from St. Louis, where he is appearing with the St. Louis Symphony and also recording concertos by Bartok and Dvorak with the orchestra--not to talk about his personal loss in the death of the 37-year-old Gurka.

But he will say that “she was a gifted artist and a delightful person. There is talk about doing a show of her collected works.” And he remembers that he knew her “since she was 2 hours old.”

After more than four decades in this country, the cellist continues to tour and to teach, though he insists that “In a real sense, the teaching is more important than the concertizing.”

Already known as a solo artist, Starker arrived here in 1948 from Budapest, Hungary, then took jobs as principal cellist with three orchestras (those of Dallas, the Metropolitan Opera and Chicago) before resuming his solo career. In the same year (1958) he left the Chicago Symphony, Starker--a few weeks after resigning his post--agreed to teach briefly at Indiana University in Bloomington.

“Now I’m in my 33rd year of teaching there,” he says, with characteristic dryness.

The eternal question is posed: How does one maintain enthusiasm for the job, either playing or teaching, after so many years?.

“Well, one always has to be productive,” the 66-year-old musician answers.

“Besides that, I’ve always felt an obligation--after all, I was lucky enough to survive the Second World War, and always feel that I must carry on for those who didn’t. My two brothers were killed. Knowing that tends to keep one focused.”

Before and after the Santa Barbara appearance, all that vigor will be needed. This week, Starker goes to New York to record with his colleague, pianist Rudolf Firkusny, the three sonatas by Bohuslav Martinu.

Coming West, Oct. 23 and 24, he plays a two-program Beethoven cycle with his friend, Dennis Russell Davies, at Stanford University in Palo Alto. His Oct. 26 program in Santa Barbara offers works by Schumann, Brahms, Cassado and Martinu; this program, again with pianist Nericki, will be repeated Oct. 27 for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society in Sherwood Hall.

And, when Starker returns here, with pianist Menahem Pressler, for a Coleman Concert, Dec. 9, he will bring a third program, this one containing different sonatas by Brahms, Heiden and Beethoven.

WINNERS: At the recent 10th Leeds International Piano Competition in England, 22-year-old Artur Pizarro of Portugal took first prize. Lars Vogt, 20, of West Germany was second and Eric Le Sage, 25, of France third.

The other finalists were Balazs Szokolay, 29, of Hungary, fourth; Haesum Paik, 25, of South Korea, fifth, and Andrei Zheltonog, 18, of the Soviet Union, sixth.

The awards were made by a 15-member international jury from a field of 71 competitors who spent two weeks performing in the Yorkshire city. The jurors included two Americans, pianist Claude Frank and critic Harold C. Schonberg. Simon Rattle, conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony--which played in the finals--participated in the final adjudication.

AND OTHER PEOPLE: Choreographer John Malashock presents a new work, “Unfortunate Names” when Malashock Dance & Company opens its season at the Lyceum Theatre in downtown San Diego, Nov. 9-11. Also on that program: Malashock’s 1990 “Stan’s Retreat” and his “Up in Flames.” The Lyceum is in Horton Plaza. . . . Planned for premiere performances in May is a new music-theater-dance work based on Riane Eisler’s book “The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future.” It will be created by a team of performers, composers, writers, designers and music directors from the Minnesota Opera New Music-Theater Ensemble in Minneapolis. Choreographers already selected for the project are Diane Aldis, Colin Connor, Susan Delattre, Alan Lindblad, Cynthia Stevens and Lovice Weller. . . . AT&T; has awarded grants totaling $100,000 to the Paul Taylor Dance Company, the Trisha Brown Company and Urban Bush Women for the 1990-91 AT&T; Dance Tour season. For the first time in its six-year history, the tour will offer support to local presenters. . . . Giuseppe Verdi’s Paris Opera version of “Il Trovatore,” called, naturally, “Le Trouvere,” will be given its first United States staging, Nov. 3-10 by Tulsa Opera. In the cast are Margaret Jane Wray, Barbara Conrad, Craig Sirianni and Greer Grimsley. David Lawton conducts; stage director is Nicholas Muni.