The history of Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs is so freighted with emotion that it's difficult to listen to them with any objectivity. The great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote 100 Love Sonnets (1960) for Matilde Urrutia, who later became his wife, and Peter Lieberson set five of them for his wife, mezzo-soprano
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Lieberson's settings grew out of a full understanding of his wife's extraordinary vocal and dramatic gifts and are suffused with his intimate awareness of her personal and artistic vitality, as well as the fragility of her physical health.
Hunt Lieberson gave the premiere of the Neruda Songs in Los Angeles in May 2005 and recorded them with the
Boston Symphony under
James Levine in November that year. She died in July 2006. The listener is always aware of the generosity of the husband and wife, composer and singer, in being allowed to participate in the intimacy of their final love song to each other.
Lieberson's musical style, which since the beginning of his relationship with
Hunt Lieberson had broadened to incorporate a richer harmonic vocabulary along with a heightened awareness of the importance of melody, reaches a new level of lyric and dramatic intensity in these songs. One hesitates to use the word Romantic to describe his new musical language, because the word implies looking backward rather than moving forward. It would be more accurate to characterize Lieberson's new work as freer, less cerebral, and more open to intuition while retaining his impeccable craftsmanship, exquisitely colorful orchestration, and discerning critical ear. The vocal lines are deeply personal and inevitable expressions of the texts, with each note precisely and passionately placed, taking full advantage of the breadth of
Hunt Lieberson's expressive abilities.
While the themes of several of the poems include the death of the beloved, and the fear of loss or separation, the overriding musical tone of the cycle is not tragedy, but tenderness. The final song, "My love, if I die and you don't," is a gentle exhortation not to grieve that concludes: "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." Lieberson ends the cycle by floating the word "amor" repeatedly over a tranquil orchestral murmur.
Hunt Lieberson invests the songs with heartbreaking tenderness and strength and an almost reckless emotional urgency and vulnerability and transparency. Her voice is warm and powerful, radiant from the bottom of her range to the top, and she soars on the expressive lines Lieberson gives her. In this live recording,
James Levine's leadership of the
Boston Symphony treats the orchestra as a sensitive and fully engaged partner in conveying the drama and poignancy of the cycle.