A NEW VOICE, A
NEW PLATEAU OF EXPRESSIVENESS
As the Joana Carneiro Era Begins---With Question Marks
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Jan. 6-13, 2009
Vol. 12, No. 11
BERKELEY---Was
that some elite European orchestra that they substituted
surreptitiously for
the Berkeley Symphony the other night?
How else to
explain the extraordinary transformation in
sound and nuance at the Oct. 15 concert? The event was a major
revelation.
Checking the rows of musicians, I saw the same familiar faces, the same
old
tuxedos. But what a difference!
Clearly, the
arrival of the first woman conductor of a professional
Bay Area orchestra since the previous millennium was not the real
story. Nor
the fact that on arrival on stage, the conductor immediately hugged the
concertmaster (surely a first). It was the subtlety and expression of
the new
music director Joana (pronounced Joe Anna) Carneiro in the
season-inaugural of
this 40-year-old orchestra that has now truly come of age, in sharp
contrast to
its ragtag beginnings. If it turns out that the 33-year-old conductor
is as
eloquent with 19th- (and 18th-) century
masterworks as
with her moderns, she will be a salient musical asset added to the Northern California firmament.
The Portuguese
musician had been a long shot against some
formidable competition in the long BSO maestro search. But she
squelched any
mutterings with her opening concert of Adams, Gabriela Frank and
Bartók, all of
it written in the past 70 years. By the end she had the audience
standing with
ovations.
She has yet to
crack the glass doors around the
major-orchestra podia. But she has conducted all over---L.A.,
N.Y., Paris,
Prague, Lisbon,
Macau, and
soon Sydney, Australia. Between her
musical finesse,
her excellent annotation in English and an undeniable charm, she shows promise of elevating the Berkeley
Symphony---perennially underfunded, underappreciated---into an
important
musical creative force with broad resonance.
And for all
those who had disparaged the BSO’s post-Nagano
future, let’s just say it’s time to eat those words.
Like Carneiro
herself, Berkeley
composer Gabriela Lena Frank, 37, is not
well enough known. Her composition “Peregrinos” (Pilgrims, 2009) was
the
keystone of the program at Zellerbach Hall, inspired by and written for
Latin
youth. But its appeal extends far beyond that realm. Frank writes in a
colorful-pictorial way, not far from early Stravinsky or “The Carnival
of the
Animals.” But she goes in quite another direction, with symbols of
Latin life and
culture, a tree of dreams, a message of hope, and a subtle prayer to a
patron
saint. Within, she awakens a sense of wonder and of mystery.
Apart from a
rather meaningless repetition of music at start
and finish, the 26-minute five-movement piece is enormously appealing.
Her characteristic
is orchestral swells coming up briefly and subsiding when you least
expect it.
She uses cycles of tension and release, some quasi-Latin rhythms, and a
clever
use of percussion, all in a very palatable mix. This brought out a
strong
performance through Carneiro, who showed equal acumen to sharply
delineated
phrases as toward the more langorous.
Carneiro
triumphed further with the Bartók Concerto for
Orchestra, widely considered the most important symphonic work ever to
come out
of Hungary (though
composed
in New York City!).
I interpret this meaty 40-minute opus as a testament of longing by an
émigré for
the homeland, which countless other composers here were undergoing
around 1943.
The opening’s oboe sounds a plaintive tone after the nebulous opening
suggesting disorientation. The Elegy features prominently the German
note H---B
natural in our parlance---which Bartók might have attached as a
firm reminder
of Hungary.
And in the finale, he prominently quotes a romantic operetta theme
entitled “Beautiful
Hungary.”
In addition,
there are derisive, satirical statements of
earlier music, some marvelous currents and cross currents of sound, and
some
Carneiro retards in the Elegy to die for.
There were
also grand gestures in the finale that brought
out the best in the players. Every one brings out the notes in
Bartók, and
these are eloquent. But Carneiro showed it’s also about feelings.
Now the
question is: how is she in doing symphonies of
Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak?
Berkeley Symphony, Joana Carneiro,
music director, at
Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley. Next: Dec. 3. For info: (51) 841-2800. or go
online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2009
#
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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