BEAUTIFUL SOUNDS---AND SOUNDS LEFT UNHEARD
Berkeley Symphony's Many Surprises, from Floor to
Ceiling
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Dec. 6-13, 2009
Vol. 12, No. 41
BERKELEY---Steven
Stucky’s
“Elegy” is I think the most beautiful music he has ever written, in a
brief
seven minutes transporting us to another far more serene world. The
2005
Pulitzer-Prize-winner attended Zellerbach Hall and drank in the warm
reception to
his offering.
The
Berkeley Symphony’s concert was generally laudable, even in light of
some unheard wonders in a Stravinsky score coming later on.
The elegy was
an excerpt from the 60-year-old Cornell professor’s “August 4,
1964”---one of
the most unwieldy titles I’ve ever encountered---taking a central slot
in the
Berkeley Symphony Dec. 3. Drawn from a work marking major turns in both
the
civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, it is a work far more of
reflection
than of mourning. The marked chordal dissonance of the opening, with
the
unmistakable message of conflict, is resolved in moving a half-tone
down, and then
the sounds turn consonant in a highly appealing idiom---not modern in
harmony, but
thoroughly elegant.
The concert
was an unusual Stucky-Sibelius pairing, neither composer having gotten
much
attention in past seasons here, Stucky’s other selection, “Radical
Light,” was
written paired to Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7, his last. Stucky followed
several of the latter’s characteristics: Producing a broad spectrum of
ideas in
a single movement, having a French-horn chorale, and a few low brasses,
all in serene
neoromanticism.
The
overarching structure of “Radical Light” is starting with some of the
softest
sounds possible and gradually opening up in an awakening-giant mode.
Along the
way there are distant phrases in the woodwinds, like dramatic snippets.
Stucky
sets up an ingratiating musical valley with opportunities to meander
without
actually exploring very far.
It is all
unabashedly tonal and consonant music. The danger with such
retrospective
styling is that such music will often be put aside as an anachronism,
and as the
thousandths attempt recapture the romantic era. It’s very
attractive---but does
it have staying power beyond a one-time audition?
The
Sibelius that followed traversed many themes, many stylistic elements
in its
brief 21-minute span, eventually all tied together with a recurrent
six-note
signature theme. There is a fine sense of urgency and propulsion, and
richness
of mingled brass. It’s an effective piece, leading you to wonder why he
wrote
no more symphonies in his last 33 years (One theory: a mental block
tied in
with heavy drinking, which prevented completing and launching the
Eighth
Symphony with which he struggled for too many years).
The
concert
concluded with “The Firebird” in the 1919 suite version by Igor
Stravinsky. About
to mark its centennial, this landmark ballet of 1909-10 is a
masterpiece of
colorful imagery by an expert craftsman. This contained novel
orchestration
such as the harmonic finger-sliding on the violins, with an eerie
effect.
Curiously,
this performance omitted---or at least, left totally inaudible to
several of us in the hall---the other noteworthy Stravinsky invention
found in this
score,
the trombone glissandi of the Kastschei’s Infernal Dance, with tones
sliding up
and down precariously like a tenderfoot on ice (just before and after
Rehearsal
Mark 13). It's one of my favorite elements in
the work. Do we have another Leopold Stokowski on our hands, making
"improvements" in scores from the podium? Or merely the halls'
famous iffy acoustics at work, the same that
also rendered the gloomy, underworldly contrabasses of the opening
almost
inaudible.
Apart from
that, the brilliance of the piece emerged at the hands of this
once-mediocre
orchestra showing a polish and vigor under the new leader Joana
Carneiro. The
slender, youthful Carneiro, 33, has made her mark with this ensemble in
this, only her
second podium stint here---and not just because she may be the only
music
director
in the world who hugs the concertmaster (and others) at the end of
each
concert. The audience clearly likes her fundamentals, as does this
critic.
Although I
should probably wear
blinders from now on.
I relish the
sound, but I am
constantly distracted by her waving and wind-milling, via effusive
floor-to-ceiling arm gestures. The
impression one gets is that she is very anxious to get far more
expression out
of the orchestra than it is producing---not the ideal impression to be
giving
for close to two hours.
Various solos
were provided by orchestra members in the Stravinsky, none of them
finer than that on bassoon by Alice Benjamin in the Lullaby.
"FIREBIRD"
EMBERS---The work even impinged on popular music in America at one
time. Nearly seven decades ago, clarinetist Artie Shaw recorded
Porter's "Begin the Beguine" in rousing fashion. And in the finale he
incorporated the same striking seven-note arching figure as
concludes the Stravinsky suite. (Review augmented on 12/5/09, &
again 12/7/09.)
Berkeley
Symphony in concert at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley;
Joana Carneiro, music director. Next: Feb. 11, April 1. Also a
new-music
read-through Dec. 6 at St. John’s
Presbyterian Church. For info: (510) 841-2800, or go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2009
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Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
#
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