Berkeley Symphony Basks in Sea of Love

Supercharged love ... That’s what Music Director Joana Carneiro programmed in two works for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra Thursday in Zellerbach Hall. But it was the sultry presence, superb expressiveness, and fine singing of mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway that really heated up the sea of love to bubbly.

Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs and Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo (Love, Magician) were a pair of heart fires, one for each half of the evening. The Songs were composed in 2005 for the composer’s dying wife, the highly regarded mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who nevertheless performed and recorded them, and was also at one time principal violist in the Berkeley and San Jose symphonies. The set texts are five highly allusive love poems by the Chilean Pablo Neruda. Already the work seems to have become an instant classic (I described some of the background to the music previewing a performance by Kelly O’Connor earlier this year at Napa’s Festival del Sole), and for good reason. It is yearningly melodic in a mellow-side quasi-tonal soundscape, but with enough dissonance to recall the modernist tendencies of Alban Berg and the Second Viennese School.

Drooping melodic phrases with longing qualities pervade the music. One features a descending fourth like the one ending the first six notes of the song “Three Coins in a Fountain.” Another exploits an effect used by Rossini in the second theme of the L’italiana in Algeri overture by dropping a minor third down to the subtonic (B in the key of C). All are associated with the luscious words of Neruda, like these:

There’s nothing here but light, quantities, clusters, space opened by the graces of the wind till it gives up the final secret of the foam. Among so many blues — heavenly blues, sunken blues ...

Fiery, Furious Lover

El amor brujo, replete with Andalusian arabesques, consisted of 13 numbers, three of which included contributions from mezzo Calloway. It tells the story of a Gypsy haunted by the spirit of her deceased, but still jealous, lover; and it includes the famous “Ritual Fire Dance.” Carneiro’s interpretation was for the most part idiomatic. The work is so full of passion, however, that it’s not possible to overemphasize the dramatic contrasts within it: I would have liked Carneiro to delineate them even more starkly, especially the dynamics — perhaps difficult to accomplish in Zellerbach’s notorious sound-swallowing acoustic. A touchstone challenge is how to handle the conclusion of the fire dance, which consists of 20 emphatic repetitions of the same chord. Some conductors vary the tempo slightly during the repetitions, thus increasing the tension even beyond what is generated by the rhythmic displacement of the passage, but Carneiro kept to a fairly strict beat, missing that opportunity.

Rachel Calloway’s performance was the most memorable aspect of the evening. Her low-cut strapless gown, leopardlike in black and gold; her exquisite gestures; her elegant yet yearning facial expressions — all combined to raise the heartbeat far beyond what her voice could do alone. While her intonation was accurate, the text was occasionally not clearly articulated, the vibrato seemed a bit excessive, and the upper range sounded colorless. Her lower notes, by contrast, were rich and alluring.

Cold science declares that love is no more than a means to reproduce the species and care for its young. Cynics say that we are merely tools of our DNA. Along those lines, the evening began with the premiere of a work commissioned by the Berkeley Symphony from the Mexican composer Enrico Chapela, which in eight minutes celebrates the 89 distinct segments of chromosomes that distinguish Amerindian and mestizo populations from others. Called Private Alleles, the piece was introduced as formulaic by Carneiro from the podium, but it didn’t sound that way — only stuffed with too many ideas to develop properly.

Patrons interviewed during intermission declared that the Chapela was “predicable,” “a chase scene,” and that “something more challenging” was needed. “I was just getting into it,” said one, “when it ended all of a sudden.” One couple was surprised to learn that the words to the Neruda were printed in the program. That they were there should have been announced on stage — they are simply too gorgeous to let those present miss their ineffable impact in Lieberson’s setting and Calloway’s personification.

I congratulate the Berkeley Symphony’s music director for putting together and conducting an engaging program. It might be nice too, if the next commission had “allele” more music in it.