New Century Chamber Orchestra opened its season on Thursday last at First Church in Berkeley, with a wide-ranging & appropriately seasonal program titled Visitations, whose general theme was the intersection between spirit & mortal worlds, though some of the pieces dealt with people caught in other liminal spaces. The Church was moodily lit with masses of thick white candles flickering around the altar/performance space, with a lit candle at the center-aisle entrance to each row. The NCCO players entered through the back, down the center aisle; when they started playing, the eight-person chorus followed the same path, entering singing the first piece, Bogoroditse devo (Rejoice, O Virgin) from Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil; this was followed immediately by Fólk fær andlit (People Get Faces) by Hildur Guðnadóttir. The Rachmaninoff is based on Slavic church chants & the Guðnadóttir, though a contemporary piece, harks back to the hypnotic overlays of medieval chant, as the singers repeat the Icelandic words for Mercy & Forgive us for. . . . Although People Get Faces has a spooky sound, the composer wrote the piece in 2015 because two refugee families from Albania had been denied asylum in Iceland, so this is one of the liminal spaces mentioned above: people caught between countries, people invisible (ghost-like, perhaps) until our realization of their individuality gives them faces. & of course it's possible that refugees denied admission will end up sent to whatever spirit world there might be, if they are forced to return to their former homeland. (The protest against the denial, which this piece was part of, was successful& the families were admitted to Iceland & granted citizenship – so a small happy ending amid the tragedies of the many refugees in the world.)
So an effective mood was immediately set. It was then disrupted by talking from the stage, of which there was a lot. I am not a fan of this practice, preferring to let the music speak for itself & establish its own thoughts & moods (also: I read the program notes, so I've already heard most of what gets said from the stage), though I realize the tide is very much against me & this sort of stage chat is pretty much obligatory these days. But I wonder if it helps make the audience chattier than it should be; there were quite a few talkers during the music, & even people videotaping parts of the performance. I will never understand the value people put on a few seconds of shaky footage.
The next section featured mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor in three pieces; first up was the Ária (Cantilena) from Bachianas Brasileiras #5 by Villa-Lobos, an elegantly floating vocalise nicely sung by O'Connor. This was followed by Peter Lieberson's Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres (My love, if I die and you don’t) from his Neruda Songs, which are of course indelibly associated with his wife, the great Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, though O'Connor made the song her own. & that was followed by Schubert's Erlkönig, in an arrangement for chamber orchestra (Hope did mention the arranger's name, but it's not in the program, which is an odd omission, as he did a number of the pieces on the program). O'Connor sang vividly & with intensity, but I felt she differentiated among the different characters in the song more with her body than her voice. The audience was very enthusiastic. It's easy to see how the Schubert fit into the program's theme, but the Villa-Lobos does have an otherworldly sound, & the selection from the Neruda Songs is about lovers eventually separated by Death & the on-going life of their Love, characterized as part of the earthly landscape, as a long river flowing onward past our vision (& of course this music reminds us of its dedicatee, who died shortly after she premiered this work by her husband). So though the program was eclectic in style, & used several different forces (orchestra alone, with chorus, with soloist), & involved a number of fairly short pieces, it all hung together in a convincing way.
The first half ended with a highlight, the world premiere of an NCCO commission, Doña Sebastiana (Lady Death) by Nicolás Lell Benavides. Before it began, the composer told us the folk tale on which it is based (taken from Cuentos: Tales from the Hispanic Southwest by Rudolfo A. Anaya): a very poor woodcutter is preparing his meager meal. A shadowy figure appears & asks to share it; it is Jesus, & the Woodcutter spurns him, as he doesn't do enough to help the poor. Another figure appears & asks to shaire it: it is the Virgin Mary, & he spurns her, as she doesn't make her son help the poor. A third figure appears & asks to share his meal: it is Lady Death, & he agrees to share with her, as she treats everyone equally. In thanks, she gives him the gift of healing, but warns him that if he sees her at the bedside of a sick person, that soul is hers & he must not save it. Time goes by, & eventually the Woodcutter, now a well-off healer, is called to the bedside of a very ill rich man, who promises him incredible wealth for a cure. Lady Death is at his bedside, but the Woodcutter cannot resist the lure of riches & gets her out of the way so that he can save the man. Later that day she reappears, takes him to a church & shows him two candles, one of which is almost sputtering out. She informs him that that was the rich man's life, but as the Woodcutter saved him & she still needs to collect a life, she will switch his light with the Woodcutter's, & thus ends his life & his access to the riches he was promised.
From this tale Benavides has shaped a rich orchestral piece, with the solo violin (Daniel Hope) portraying Doña Sebastiana while the others portray the changing moods & situation of the Woodcutter. Death is single, but the human personalities are varied & shifting (& sometimes shifty). Lady Death is brilliantly characterized by Benavides, & brilliant performed by Hope, with a sound that is distinct, firm, but never overly emphatic; with an edge of eerieness, a bit out of this world, but also a part of it, inescapably. There's nothing melodramatic about this Lady Death, but she's clearly a presence. I was reminded of Whitman's Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet. I hope I get an opportunity to take this piece in again, & soon.
In fact I would have been happy if they had opened the second half with a reprise, instead of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The adaptation for chamber orchestra (again, the name was omitted from the program) was fine & it's always a fun piece, but whenever it's played there's an elephant in the room in the shape of a mouse, specifically Mickey. As Hope mentioned, the piece is inerasably linked with its segment of Fantasia, & who can help seeing the Sorcerer's high hat & grim face as he stills the waters unloosed by his mischievous apprentice? Very amusing, but I would have preferred another hearing of the Benavides.
This was followed by two short pieces: first Carlos Simon's Elegy: A Cry from the Grave & then Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten. As with the piece by Guðnadóttir, Simon's piece seems, based on its title, spooky, but like that piece has an urgent political meaning – Simon wrote it to memorialize Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, & Michael Brown, all black men murdered by police or vigilantes. The music is elegiac, lyrical but somber, rising up & rising above. The Pärt was inspired by his late discovery of Britten's music. As with the earlier pieces on the program, its hypnotic use of repetition & slight variation associated it with early Church music, an association strengthened by the reverberations of bells. That led us to the final piece, Ariel Ramirez's Misa Criolla (arranged for chamber orchestra by Paul Bateman, with Hope's solo violin taking one of the vocal lines), which featured Gabriel Navia on charango (a lute-like stringed instrument from the Andes) as well as our chorus, led by David Xiques. This is one of the "folk masses" that appeared after Vatican II allowed Mass to be said in the vernacular. It is vibrant music, filled with echoes of traditional Latin American & Hispanic folk sounds: again, a piece between two worlds, the formal tradition of the Mass & the folk sounds of the people. As usual NCCO plays with a rich & almost plush sound that belies its relatively small number. The chorus, assembled for these concerts, was excellent throughout. The whole program was thoughtfully assembled, a nice mix of the unfamiliar & the familiar done with a twist. But the Benavides was definitely the highlight.
No comments:
Post a Comment