VIEWING THE ARTS: Gregory Bemko dreams, and believes (06/23/02)

VIEWING THE ARTS

by Adrian Bryttan

Gregory Bemko dreams, and believes

Again and again, Gregory Bemko as a boy had experienced the same exhilarating dream: the ground kept slipping away, and he was soaring higher and higher - without wings, without any rumble from propellers, only serene weightlessness spreading from fingertip to fingertip, floating him far above the rooftops, emerging through the gossamer clouds - higher and faster than any bird, the world below dwindling into an insignificant maze until, by God, he was all but flying next to the sun itself!

Only now it was 1944 and this was no dream. The airspeed registered 185 mph and his bomber was being knocked about the sky by the deadly showers of German flak. It was like flying through walls of fire. Gregory Bemko had turned over the controls and gone back into the belly of his B-26 Martin Marauder. Carefully positioning one foot in front of the other, he crept out onto the 5-inch-wide beam which was suspended over the open bomb bay. Blasts of cold air whipped around the exposed strut on which he balanced, anticipating the release of the plane's ordnance. The 1,000-pound bombs started to drop from their nest, so close he could almost touch them as they fell. Like in a rolling film, he watched with fascination their slow arcs to the targets and listened for the delayed reverberations from the explosions 12,000 feet below.

Once as a young boy, Greg took apart and reassembled his mother's foot-powered Singer sewing machine. He needed to discover for himself just what each and every wheel, belt and lever actually did; no detail was too minor to be overlooked. This combination of curiosity and perseverance became the driving force in his life. Years later, even though he had never piloted an airplane prior to his wartime military service, Greg became a member of the bomber group that had the best record for accuracy in the 9th Air Force and was therefore chosen to lead the invasion of Europe on D-Day. When the Allies launched 14,000 planes at Normandy, Gregory Bemko piloted plane No. 5 in the leading squadron of the leading group.

Throughout his life Mr. Bemko focused on striving for the peak experience in everything he did. He chose one of the most difficult instruments, the cello, and before long arrived at the heights of his profession, performing as a soloist in the world's greatest concert halls. In addition to designing his own cellos, he has designed and built two beautiful homes. He founded, and for 13 years administered, one of the prominent chamber music festivals in California. He has bred pedigree dogs, designed his own smoking pipes and furniture, and been the proud owner of six high-performance sports cars.

One of his favorite movies is "The Gaucho," a silent film in which Douglas Fairbanks flips cigarettes into his mouth and laughs at danger while performing precision daredevil acrobatics. Mr. Bemko never forgot his own father's inspirational words: "Terpy, Kozache, otamanom budesh!" (Be steadfast, Kozak, and you'll become a leader).

Presently a robust 86, Mr. Bemko continues to approach everything in life with gusto and passion.

Mr. Bemko's mother, Tekla Ratushny left her hometown of Toky in the Ternopil region as a young girl of 12 and came to America in 1903. His father, Stefan Bemko, also was from Halychyna and arrived in New York at the age of 17. Greg was born in Brooklyn in 1916. He remembers his father as a Ukrainian patriot who later served as deacon in Babylon, Long Island. Young Greg often sang in the church choir.

Today, Mr. Bemko smiles when he recalls his childhood. He can recount many colorful stories about the singing and acting company led by his parents in the Ukrainian National Home in Manhattan. Back in the 1920s they organized concerts in Van Cortland Park to benefit the orphans of the first world war. Many of their plays and musicals ("Maty Naimychka," "Natalka Poltavka," "Zaporozhets za Dunayem") were reviewed by the American press. After the final curtain, chairs were cleared from the auditorium and everyone sang and danced into the late hours. The echoes from those days are still fresh in Mr. Bemko's mind.

Most people would say it's much too late to begin learning the cello at 18. Yet Mr. Bemko made such exceptional progress that after only two years of study he was already performing the Saint Saens concerto. His sister was a violinist and the young Bemkos often organized chamber music ensembles. At the same time, he developed an abiding interest in the history and construction of string instruments and spent much of his free time in violin shops watching experts build and take apart rare and priceless instruments.

When war broke out, Mr. Bemko joined the army and, perhaps because of his musical background (his sharp ears quickly picked out all the clicks and pops in the airwaves), he was first assigned to radio operators school. Subsequently he applied and was accepted for pilot training in Nashville, Tenn. At that time, the B-26 was the fastest two-engine bomber around, but it had been rushed into production and its wing proved too small. Mr. Bemko was then sent to train on the P-38 Lightning, a twin-fuselage fighter. There he learned to perform dives and rolls and a whole range of virtuoso aerial acrobatics.

When the redesigned B-26 was ready, Mr. Bemko picked up his plane in Georgia. He had to fly it in a series of hops through Florida, Puerto Rico down to South America, across to Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic, Africa and finally England. With his eye for detail, he remembers flying over the Amazon River where it is surrounded by solid jungle near the equator. Today Mr. Bemko can still describe the swirls of silt in the river, which is an amazing 60 miles wide where it joins the ocean and becomes the Gulf Stream, visible for many miles as a muddy brown current in the Atlantic.

Mr. Bemko logged 67 bombing runs over Europe. After one mission, the ground crew counted 157 holes in his plane inflicted by enemy fire. Another time he saw the left wing of the B-26 next to him shot away, sending its crew into a death spiral. If it had been their right wing, in all likelihood Mr. Bemko would not be around to talk about it today. But he was not recklessly testing fate nor was he trying to conquer fate. He explains it was a job that had to be done, no more and no less. It consisted of hundreds of details that had to be carefully checked. When I asked him what advice he would now offer young musicians, he identified two traits: honesty and perseverance. These qualities are also a key to understanding why he says he enjoyed being in combat.

After the war, it was full steam ahead for his musical career. Mr. Bemko purchased a beautiful Gobetti cello from Hill and Sons in London and was appointed principal cellist with the Denver Symphony. There he was soloist in the concertos of Dvorak, Boccherini and Lalo, and served on the faculty at Denver University. After moving to Los Angeles he taught at Occidental College and was principal cellist with the San Diego Symphony.

It was on one of his many trips to San Diego that he discovered the charming community of Lake San Marcos and bought a 13-acre avocado-covered mountainside overlooking the beautiful lake below. Mr. Bemko not only designed and built his panoramic house, gardens and driveway, but also designed all of the interior: a concert hall/living room, kitchen, even the marble tables and chairs. Elegantly decorated with Ukrainian and Japanese elements, his home exhibits framed programs and photos collected from many years of concertizing throughout the world.

For one year, Mr. Bemko had lived in France in order to begin his first solo concert tour of Europe and also to study in Prades with Pablo Casals. (The legendary cellist was also a close friend of Albert Schweitzer.) Mr. Bemko remembers Casals as a very humble man and a good human being, who every year gave free concerts for the working people. Casals once spotted a butterfly perched on his cello. Mr. Bemko fondly remembers how the old master gently cupped the insect in his hands and walked over to the window to release it.

Mr. Bemko was quickly signed by Columbia Artists for solo concert tours. It was then that he met his future wife, Yoshiko Niiya. A brilliant child prodigy on the piano, Yoshiko (Yo) was at that time in great demand as a chamber musician. From the start, it was a match made in musical heaven, and Yo canceled all her other accompanying engagements. Over the years they performed together in many of the greatest halls of Europe, including Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Wigmore Hall in London and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. (In many recitals Mr. Bemko included a set of variations based on "Oi Ne Khody, Hrytsiu.") Critics and the public alike acclaimed the duo everywhere they played: "brilliantly talented ... a beautifull smooth tone" (Vienna), "impeccable technique" (Zurich), "passionate ... masterly presentation" (Amsterdam), "a magnificent cellist" (Los Angeles). At Mr. Bemko's recital in the Brahmssaal in Vienna, the stagehands had turned off the lights in the hall and the audience still applauded and applauded, even though they had already been treated to five encores.

Back in Los Angeles, Mr. Bemko opened up a violin shop, and many of the foremost artists of that time made their way to his store. The pre-eminent cellist Gregor Piatigorsky was a colleague and close personal friend and Mr. Bemko can recall many hearty anecdotes about this gentle giant. Here Mr. Bemko also designed and built his first home and also started to design the construction of four unique cellos incorporating features of models by Stradivarius, Montagnana, and Guadagnini. These were built for him by some of the finest contemporary makers and now occupy a place of honor in his Lake San Marcos home. Today many of his former cello students play first chair in major orchestras and enjoy revisiting their teacher. The sound of cellos being tried out and compared often resonates into the sunny California air high above the lake.

Mr. Bemko's fertile imagination extends to the violin repertoire. He transcribed for cello Paganini's "La Campanella", all three Brahms violin sonatas and the complete Brahms violin concerto. Little wonder that at a recent concert I heard professional musicians from Los Angeles refer to him as a "legend." (This summer I conducted the rarely performed Mendelssohn violin concerto in d minor in San Marcos and one week later Mr. Bemko had already learned the solo violin part.) When I traveled to conduct the orchestras and opera companies in Lviv and Kharkiv, he graciously donated many complete sets of strings and accessories to our fellow Ukrainian colleagues.

A project dear to his heart is the Lake San Marcos Chamber Music Festival which he initiated and together with Yo administered over many years. I met Greg and his charming wife that first season and enjoyed performing in a piano trio with them for the inaugural concerts. For 13 years they directed and managed this chamber music series, which featured many of the finest West Coast artists and more recently many Ukrainian performers.

An aficionado of fine cigars and smoking pipes, Mr. Bemko commissioned Charatan Pipes of London to build him a model he personally designed. He has also enjoyed owning many sports cars: a Singer, a Triumph TR3, a 500 hp Corvette, two Porsches and an Aston Martin. Now, at age 86, his eye is on the newest Jaguar XKR.

As his dreams kept multiplying, the little boy who dreamed he could fly never stopped believing. At a recent Lake San Marcos concert, Mr. Bemko was presented with a collection of heartfelt letters from many of his former students, grateful for his skillful teaching and his impact on their lives.

Gregory Bemko's kind nature, his optimism and hard work are an inspiration to all who know him. And I'm sure everyone would love to join in wishing him "Mnohaya, Mnohaya Lita!

Mr. Bryttan's e-mail address is a.bryttan@att.net.

| Home Page |