Women Conquering Berkeley
BERKELEY,CA—The highlight of the Berkeley Symphony program the other night was, astonishingly, the surprise vocal encore running close to 10 minutes in length: The S.F. Girls Chorus singing a near-a-cappella work with mezzo obbligata,”Only in Sleep” by the Australian Eriks Esenvalds. If ever there was proof of the emergence of the creative female, it was in this mellifluous chorus for the girls as led by the SFGC director, Valérie Sainte-Agathe.
How apt, the distaff triumph in this hot-and-cold evening focusing on women’s voices and creativity. The orchestra’s new Music Director Joseph Young pulled out all the stops in this endeavor, with a newly orchestrated piece by Eastbay product Mary Kouyoumdjian, and also Spanish songs rendered by the gingerly mezzo Kelley O’Connor. While on balance the Symphony’s program was no barn-burner, conductor Joseph Young carried off a sinewy, workman-like rendition of Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 as the finale.
That Eastbay composer Mary K. produced “Become Who I Am,” a verbal confessional by teenagers with music background. The composer had pretaped many teenagers telling their concerns and aspirations, and backed these with a subordinate orchestra and 40-voice San Francisco Girls Chorus as heard at Zellerbach Hall Feb. 6. This work would have optimum impact if played to a houseful of high-schoolers, an assembly a generation or two younger than the average patron at this concert.
The ex-pat Bryce Dessner, 43, another composer new to these listeners, offered up an alluring song cycle “Voy a Dormir” (I Will Sleep) to poems by Alfonsina Storni, an Argentine counterpart to our Sylvia Plath. Ardent and powerful in imagery, the four Storni poems imagine her at the bottom of the sea, anticipating her oceanic suicide in 1938. The tranquil tone-painting by the deft Dessner evokes water effects with a light orchestral touch: glockenspiel here, keyboard glissandos and vibraphone there.
Soloist was the lyric mezzo Kelley O’Connor. Her approach to the four poems in Spanish was delicate and cautious. She came into her own however, opening up in the expressive and emotional swan song which ominously leaves a telling message for Him: “I have gone away.” Alex Camphouse was tops providing an elegant horn solo, redeeming the brass’ imperfections elsewhere.
Young led with immense, broad, sweeping arm gestures embracing much of the stage (not unusual, as he had led student ensembles for years). Though his moves lean more toward stodgy than to fluid, he gives more cues than most, and his Brahms was attractively assertive, with vibrant contrasts in dynamics. He is the latest of Berkeley’s very diverse podium leaders, going from Kent Nagano to Joana Carneiro to, now, this African-American who won out over a far more conventional field of podium aspirants. With the veteran Michael Morgan next door at the Oakland Symphony, the East Bay leads the league in orchestral diversity emphasis.
MUSIC NOTES—In an unusual arrangement, leadership at the BSO is divided between the music director and the artistic director, René Mandel. Mandel’s residency here enables Young to continue as director of ensembles at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and other on-going eastern commitments.
The orchestra this week paid tribute to Ward Spangler, the indefatigable and seemingly ageless percussionist with the BSO for 45 years. Spangler is also part of the Bay Area’s formidable “Freeway Philharmonic,” the much-traveled band of high-mileage freelance professionals strengthening orchestras from down in Santa Cruz north to Santa Rosa, some 125 miles apart.
BERKELEY SYMPHONY and S.F. Girls’ Chorus, Joseph Young conducting, Zellerbach Hall, Feb. 6. For BSO info, call (510) 841-2800 or go online: www.berkeleysymphony.org.
