Carneiro delivers the goods with Berkeley Symphony
The Berkeley Symphony came out of the box at full gallop Thursday night at Zellerbach Hall, in the second of three concerts for this season. Joana Carneiro conducted with infectious energy, inspiring the musicians to a sustained high that carried them through two difficult contemporary pieces and Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the Eroica.
Carneiro spoke beforehand of the program’s unifying themes. “Clarity of colors, economy of means… and the inevitability of Eroica.”
Originally written for electric guitar and tape loops, Paul Dresher’s Cornucopia was further adapted from chamber orchestra to full orchestra. That fuller sound is usually traded for muddier entrances, but this was certainly not the case here. The violins shared pure lines that kept the multiple threads intact.
There was an oceanic quality to the strings, an almost implacable beauty of fluid entrances and slow waves of notes. Basses slowly gripped the air and slowly died and marimba beat a bright tattoo to flute, translating electronic loops into richer waveforms.
A theme appeared in the flutes, the first of many rich moments by Emma Moon and Stacey Pelinka. It meandered through the orchestra, developing urgency as violins bounced their bows. Arpeggio-like runs materialized in the piano, and the musical threads began to separate and blur out of phase, careening into a wild finish.
While conducting and studying under Esa-Pekka Salonen at the LA Philharmonic, Carneiro became familiar with the conductor/composer’s own work. In Five Images after Sapho, written in 1999, he set fragments of Sapho’s poetry to music to describe a young woman’s journey through sexual awakening.
In concert notes Salonen described the text. “It is the tremendous energy of suffocated sexuality and the vibrant eroticism in Sappho that got my imagination going.”
Written largely in pentatonic to suggest the modes of ancient Greece, the text was sung by soprano Jessica Rivera, who also appeared in the Bay Area as Kumudha in John Adams’ A Flowering Tree. Then as now, she emptied herself into the emotional demands of the role, long notes simmered with a tight vibrato and then leapt up for unexpected intervals.
The small chamber orchestra supplied a wealth of textures—flute, harp, and tubular gong accompanied voice in the first fragment, as ancient as the poetry. In the second, violins shaped a whirlwind of downward scales.
Without warning
As a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart.
Piccolo and bass clarinet joined notes for a surprisingly sweet mix that bracketed Rivera’s lines. A set of Thai temple gongs added dark luster to the percussion, adroitly played by Ward Spangler.
Despite its wild beauty, the high tessitura was straining both for Rivera and the audience, detracting from the tender side of love.
Beethoven’s Eroica marked a departure from the more derivative works of his first two symphonies, displaying a genius in full bloom. As playful as it is “heroic,” its seamless transitions and huge dynamics embellished an audacious manipulation of the themes.
The Berkeley Symphony, stiffened by Carneiro’s exactitude and inspired by her exuberance, gave a superb performance that catapulted a community-based orchestra into the top tiers of professional groups. After the demanding Dresher work it was no surprise that they delivered an incisive interpretation of Eroica that was all about clarity of line and manipulation of motive, rather than about lushness and pomp. It was a peek into the motives of a hero, rather than his grand gestures.
Carneiro’s second season shows a growing fit between conductor and performers, and promises exciting programs. They return on Thursday April 1 with Barber and Brahms, and a new work by Jörg Widmann.
—Adam Broner
This article originally appeared in the Piedmont Post.
Photo of Joana Carneiro by Rodrigo Souza