The five songs for mezzo-soprano and orchestra that Peter Lieberson composed in 2004 to the poems of Pablo Neruda have taken on something of a sacred aura since the death of Lieberson’s wife, Lorraine, in 2005.
With Lieberson’s own death in 2011, also from cancer, the Neruda Songs wear a cloak of tragedy once you know their back story, much as Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder resonate with ardor once you know that the composer was infatuated with Mathilde Wesendonck.
But a good performance of the Neruda Songs can lift some of its background sadness away, as the mezzo Elizabeth DeShong demonstrated last Saturday night (March 16) at the Knight Concert Hall when she sang the Lieberson cycle with the Cleveland Orchestra. It marked the conclusion of the orchestra’s Miami residency for this season, and was led by its principal guest conductor in Miami, Giancarlo Guerrero.
Lieberson scored his songs for an intimate large orchestra, with pairs of winds and brass, plus a bevy of percussion instruments, harp, piano, and strings. His language is Berg-like, though more tonal, and he writes with sensitivity and skill, though he is not a composer of great melodic facility. The songs are a not entirely successful mix of Second Viennese School and a sublimated Latin flavor as filtered through a faintly Hollywood scrim, but the strength of the poems and the good taste Lieberson showed in setting tem have made them a popular contemporary music choice on today’s symphonic programs.
DeShong has a rich, deep, plush mezzo, and she sang these pieces with total commitment. Her singing sounded heartfelt at all times, strong and large, and there is just enough languor in Lieberson’s writing to allow her voice to luxuriate, which it seems naturally to want to do. Other mezzos singing this cycle have had lighter voices; DeShong’s heavier instrument added a kind of honeyed sweetness to the songs.
Guerrero and the orchestra accompanied ably, particularly in the more delicate parts of the writing, and in moments such as the sea-color coda of the second song Amor, amor las nubes a la torre del cielo (Love, love, the clouds went up the tower of heaven). But there was some less-than-precise ensemble playing when it came to entrances and cutoffs, and in music as carefully calculated as this, that sticks out.
Interpretively, too, it was somewhat out of sync, with passages such as the big orchestral clusters in the second song sweeping in dramatically, and while that is well-reflected in the text (No hay aqui sino luz) — There’s nothing here but light — it sounded somewhat haphazard here, and again I think that’s because the songs are so tightly controlled. It may be that an almost purposeful lack of color ends up working better for this music, in which suggestion pays a much stronger role than explicitness.
Then again, there are moments like the movie-music instrumental sections of the fourth song, Ya eres mía (Now you’re mine), that are hard to make sound like they didn’t walk in from the soundstage next door. And one wonders why Lieberson didn’t make just a little more out of the No te vayas motif in the third song, No estés lejos de mi un solo día (Don’t go far off, not even for a day), or whether he couldn’t have let the little oboe sing-song pattern in the fifth and final song, Amor mio, si muero y tu no mueres (My love, if I die and you don’t), blossom a bit, Barber-like, before returning in the muted strings at the end.
Still, DeShong’s generously radiant reading of these songs made as good a case for them as anyone has. It was pleasing, too, to see the Cleveland Orchestra schedule this work and give it a hearing on a bill of fare that was sure to draw plenty of people.
The sellout audience was there for the second work on the program, the Ninth Symphony (in D minor, Op. 125) of Beethoven. DeShong was joined by soprano Nicole Cabell, tenor Garrett Sorensen and bass Raymond Aceto for the vocal quartet in the finale, and the choral parts were sung by the Master Chorale of South Florida and the Tampa Bay Master Chorale.
The Ninth retains an enormous power to be an unforgettable event and to also reach the average audience member at the gut level. There aren’t that many pieces in the canon in which you can see so many people listeners bobbing their heads or moving their feet during the music, or smiling in recognition at hearing that big tune in the last movement. For the occasional concertgoer, the Ninth is what symphonic music is all about.
And the Cleveland Orchestra and Guerrero gave them a zesty, vibrant traversal of this iconic score. Guerrero’s enthusiasm is plain to see and feel, and his conception of the symphony had a compelling forward motion, even in the slow movement, which pushed steadily forward to the bitonal clash that opens the finale.
Particularly notable here were the violas and cellos, who have memorable, important roles to play and rose to the occasion, and to the horn soloist in the third movement, who has one of the trickiest, most exposed orchestral solos in the repertoire. But ensemble was not as hospital-corners tight as concertgoers expect with a group of this caliber; this was not a night to remember hearing an orchestra that displayed perfect virtuoso precision.
The first two movements had a great deal of energy and spirit, with the huge tuttis of the first movement played with an emphasis on its starkness, its reedy, bare-fifths flavor, which sounded bracing. The scherzo cooked along with a light touch that dominated even with its exciting timpani shocks to the system.
The slow movement had dignity and beauty, but perhaps not enough breadth. There was ample beautiful playing from the orchestra, but the tempo of the last few pages was perhaps a bit too fast to allow the music, one of Beethoven’s finest slow movements, to make its fullest impact.
The quartet sang admirably well in the final movement, and bass Aceto was especially powerful in his opening statement. There were a huge number of choristers in the seats above the stage whose combined force was almost fearsome; they sang with palpable enthusiasm, and the balance between men and women was gratifyingly equal.
Tempos are always a difficulty in the final movement because they change so often, and it takes a good deal of on-the-spot calculation to figure out whether the narrative pace is working well. This fourth movement overall was too rushed, especially after the tenor’s Turkish march, which Sorensen sang well but which was moving along rather rapidly, shortchanging him somewhat.
That was the chief problem with the other sections: there wasn’t enough time to let the music sink in. The Ihr sturtz nieder passage, which I like to think of as Beethoven’s consort-of-viols moment, so lovely is the string writing, cried out for a bit more patience, some more intimacy. And the vocal quartet’s last B major appearance also lost some of its finality as Guerrero pushed it along.
Nonetheless, this was still a hugely enjoyable night at the concert hall, in part because there were so many people having such a good time. They vociferously applauded this performance — and there was a sizable contingent of chorus fans in the audience who ratcheted up the volume whenever it was time for them to take a bow. This symphony’s Everyman appeal remains impressively potent nearly 200 years after it was composed, and the Cleveland Orchestra and its musician guests decisively demonstrated why that is, and why it’s likely to continue for generations of audiences yet to come.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s 2014 residency will being Jan. 24-25 with a Viennese-themed concert featuring violinist Gil Shaham in the Violin Concerto of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and music by Schubert and Johann Strauss II. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is the focus of the Jan. 31-Feb. 1 concerts, with the great English baritone Simon Keenlyside singing music by Richard Strauss and Henri Duparc. The German violinist Arabella Steinbacher brings the Prokofiev First Concerto to the stage Feb. 21-22 on a program with music by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky, and the series concludes March 21-22 with Holst’s tone poem The Planets, accompanied by high-definition NASA images projected onstage. Percussionist Colin Currie is the soloist in Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto for the concerts, which will begin with the Abduction from the Seraglio overture of Mozart. For tickets, call 305-949-6722 or visit www.arshtcenter.org.