Search - Lorraine Hunt Lieberson :: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sings Peter Lieberson 'Neruda Songs'

A Sublime, Deeply Poignant Collaboration Reflects the Love S

Ed Uyeshima | San Francisco, CA USA | 01/05/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It is impossible not to be moved by this wondrous recording by the estimable mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who passed away much too soon at age 52 last year. Possessing one of the most vividly lustrous and naturally radiant voices, she peaked at a later age than most of her fellow singers, allowing her the time and experience to build greater depth and texture into her exquisite interpretations. Sadly, Hunt Lieberson recorded sporadically during her career since she was something of a maverick when it came to managing her career. Beyond her exquisite vocal work on 2004's "Handel Arias" and 2003's "Bach Cantatas BWV 82 & 199", one of my prized possessions is the 2004 DVD of her luminous performance as Irene in the 1996 Glyndebourne Festival production of Handel's "Theodora".



With this posthumous release, we are fortunate to have a recording of her November 2005 performance in Boston's Symphony Hall under the baton of James Levine. Running scarcely over half an hour, the disc is all too brief, but the emotionalism is pungent with every movement. Impressed deeply by several love sonnets written by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, her husband Peter, the composer son of ballerina Vera Zorina and longtime Columbia Records CEO Goddard Lieberson, wrote lush musical settings for five of them. Each poem reveals a facet of love distinctive in its pronouncement as the succession of pieces moves from openly rapturous to inevitable grief at separation. One cannot help but draw parallels between the emotional arc of the compositions and Hunt Lieberson's long-running bout with cancer and her pending fate.



When one hears the unadorned joy in her voice in the first poem, "If your eyes were not the color of the moon", the intractable bond between composer and performer is palpable. The third poem, "Don't go far off, not even for a day" reflects an artist with an innate and highly plangent sense of her brief time on earth. However, it is the fifth poem, "My love, if I die and you don't", which really tugs most at the heartstrings as she sings of the eternal fate of true love in spite of any earthbound limitations a couple will face. The most sublime moment comes when she repeats the word "amor" at the end with a dream-like, faraway tone. This is magnificent, transcendent work from a singer for the ages and a composer whose enduring love for his wife has inspired his most profound work."

Sumptuous poetry

Mark Eisner | Northern California and Southern Chile | 01/03/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As a Pablo Neruda fan, I was swept away by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's interpretations and Peter's compositions. They suspend time and the heart in aria. As Mark Swed wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Her final legacy was the Neruda Songs, her husband's exceptional beautiful love letter to her. These are among the most sumptuous orchestral songs ever written, and they are also a profuoundly inspiring public farewell by lovers." For an introduction to Neruda's poetry, I suggest City Lights' The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems which I had the honor of editing. As Pulitzer Prize winning Chilean/American writer Ariel Dorfman wrote, "What better way to celebrate the hundred years of Neruda's glorious residence on our earth than this selection of crucial works - in both languages! - by one of the greatest poets of all time. A splendid way to begin a love affair with our Pablo or, having already succumbed to his infinite charms, revisit him passionately again and again and yet again." The Bloomsbury Review wrote, "The call for a more accessible collection of Neruda's important poems is answered with City Lights' The Essential Neruda, a 200-page edition that offers 50 of Neruda's key poems. The editors and translators know how to extract gold from a lifetime of prolific writing. If you want a handy Neruda companion and don't know where to begin, this is it." The book makes an important accompanimient to Lorraine's incredible recording.







Peace,

Mark Eisner"

A Stunningly Beautiful and Meaningful Farewell/Adios

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 01/04/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are great love stories about artists through the centuries but few would equal the purity of the love story of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Peter Lieberson. History will always remember this treasured couple for their individual gifts to music (Lorraine with her inimitable mezzo voice intrinsically involved in whatever she elected to sing and Peter for his lushly beautiful yet rewardingly avant garde compositions) and it is so very fitting that the final moments from their lives together should have been a song cycle on which they collaborated. This listener heard the performance of the Neruda Songs in May 2005 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a passionate, soaringly resonant and rich evocation of the language and the soul of Pablo Neruda's poetry: Lieberson was incomparable.



It is so fitting that she left with us a live performance of the five songs written for her by her husband with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine (the cycle was co-commissioned by both the Los Angeles and Boston forces). The result is now a gold standard of not only the magnificence of this erotically charged cycle but also of the eloquence of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's voice and legacy. The cycle of five poems is some of the finest writing for voice and orchestra to grace our halls in some years. And while it is impossible to find a flaw in either the composition or the performance, the breathless closing of the cycle (in translation) 'But love, this love has not ended: just as it never had a birth, it has no death: it is like a long river, only changing lands, and changing lips' and then the repeated 'amor, amor, amor.....'. There are few works so perfectly created, so sublimely performed. This is a recording that will never tarnish but only gleam with age. Grady Harp, January 06

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