The Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival Goes Back To Basics. By Margaret Regan LAST YEAR'S TUCSON Winter Chamber Music Festival was a kind of Czech invasion, a multi-media extravaganza featuring a host of musicians playing fine music from Eastern Europe, actors offering up spoken-word performances and even a movie screening. This year's festival, the fourth week-long event staged by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, will feature just the music, thanks. "That was exceptional last year," explains the group's president, Jean-Paul Bierny. "The Janacek (music) was based on literary works. Multi-media is something we cannot abuse. One, it's not everybody's cup of tea and two, it should only be done when it's justified." And this year's concerts, a series of four given over the week from Sunday, March 9, to Sunday, March 16, have nothing to do with literature and everything to do with music that Bierny calls "very, very exciting." Once again under the artistic direction of cellist Peter Rejto, this year's festival nevertheless will provide some overtones of Eastern Europe, though this time with "a bit of a Hungarian flavor" rather than Czech. That flavor will come from two works by Bartók that are rarely played, his Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet and Piano at the Wednesday evening concert, and his Music for Two Pianos, Percussion on Friday evening. None of Bartók's more familiar string quartets will be played, instead giving way to music that demands the unusual combination of instruments the festival will offer. This is music "you can't usually hear: that's the purpose of a festival." The team of 15 guest musicians are led by the Bartók Quartet, an acclaimed Budapest group that has "played here many times in our regular season, always consistently (giving performances) of exceptionally high quality," Bierny says. This year for the first time, two pianists have been recruited, the husband-and-wife team of Kevin Fitz-Gerald and Bernadene Blaha, both at the University of Southern California. They will be joined for the Friday evening Bartók by Tucson's own Gary Cook, a percussionist who teaches at the University of Arizona, and percussionist Drew Lang of Texas. The concert will also feature "several beautiful but rarely played classical Romantic pieces," says Bierny. On the first Sunday afternoon concert, for instance, Richard Todd, principal horn player with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, will perform on the Brahms Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano. And, in accordance with the Friends' philosophy of promoting new music as well as classics, the musicians will also play a 1984 work by Harbison, Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, on Friday, and a recent work by Ingolf Dahl, Concerto-A-Tre for Violin, Cello and Clarinet, on the second Sunday. But lovers of tradition will also be able to find at least one work by such classical luminaries as Schubert, Beethoven or Mozart at each concert. The final concert will end, as usual, with a splash, this year in the form of the dynamic Shostakovich Quintet for Piano and Strings. The Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival offers concerts at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 9 (works by Kodály, Brahms, Schubert); at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 12 (Bartók, Beethoven, Schumann, Dohnanyi); at 8 p.m. Friday, March 14 (Harbison, Bartók, Mozart, Brahms); and at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 16 (Mozart, Dahl, Parker, Shostakovich). Dress rehearsals on the mornings of the concerts, from 9 a.m. to noon, are free and open to the public. Musicologist John Fitch of the UA will give a talk one-half hour before each concert. All concerts will be in the TCC Leo Rich Theatre, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets for individual concerts are $15; festival tickets are $55. A gala benefit dinner, at 6 p.m. Saturday, March 15, at the Arizona Inn, will feature selections by festival musicians. It costs $80. For more information or for reservations, call 298-5806.

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