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| Peter Lieberson: Neruda Songs - Kelley O'Connor, New World Symphony, Stephane Deneve (Photo: Alex Markow, courtesy of New World Symphony) |
Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe, Lieberson: Neruda Songs; Kelley O'Connor, New World Symphony, Stephane Deneve; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts Miami, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 7 March 2026
Robert J Carreras has thoughts about the meaning of home after experiencing Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs and Ravel's complete Daphnis & Chloe from Stephane Deneve and the New World Symphony in Miami
It is just as well that Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs is almost single-handedly kept playing by Kelley O’Connor. It is just as well that her portraits of this work have remained steady across time. In 2028, it will be twenty years since the composer trained O’Conner in this music at his home in Hawaii.
O’Connor’s performance of Neruda Songs may be more informed by the years that have passed and life experience, but still comes across as quite fresh. By and large, her work in these songs has stayed near to the composer’s home, and he would have it no other way.
Kelley O’Connor’s gently assumed, creamy mezzo and proficiency in Peter Lieberson’s musical idiom – a smoldering mix of melodic mazes and rhythmic lazes – translates into observing the most intimate scenes of a relationship. Lieberson wants to keep every moment alive and vital with his darling Lorraine – every note, every measure, every word is precious.
O’Conner makes native Spanish speakers reevaluate their use of common words (sueno, porque, ojos, lejos), making subliminally seductive even those perfunctory in daily speech. Stephane Deneve aides in accenting words at crucial points by stretching out rhythmic values – knowing O’Connor would not object, and that New World Symphony (NWS) was well-prepared to execute; they doubled these efforts later for Ravel.
O’Connor is musically and textually grounded, and throughout, Stephane Deneve sees to it that NWS stays near her; their mutual mission is to stay close to the composer’s home. NWS Fellows Lyric River, on flute, and Kelley Osterberg, on english horn, expand on the feeling of intimacy, and the percussion to a Latinate local color.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s shadow looms large and long over Neruda Songs. The composer certainly meant to keep it that way when he welcomed Kelley O’Connor into his home, some two years after Lorraine succumbed to breast cancer. Now, any other performer of Neruda Songs clearly understands they take up the same mantle. A basic background in the Lieberson story is essential for truly experiencing Neruda Songs and to appreciate it for the emotional and physical workhorse it is.
The specter of Lorraine’s infirmity and eventual death was a driving force for her husband – to feel this great loss through pictures of their closest moments. In each of Pablo Neruda’s five poems, the composer found a vehicle through which to “reflect a different face in love’s mirror.”
There is more to Neruda Songs. Peter Lieberson gives a cross-lingual salute to the art song form and lieder by setting these Spanish poems to music. Neruda Songs is Peter Lieberson letting audiences into his home, connecting them across love languages and cultures. With every playing of Neruda Songs, the Liebersons return home.
Peter’s home is Lorraine.
Putting the Lieberson’s pictures together into a coherent musical montage is grueling, and NWS responds. They respond for the Liebersons, and they respond for Maurice Ravel later tonight. At concert’s end, the cheers were loud and long for the instrumentalists, and for the vocalises of the Master Chorale of South Florida that joined them for Daphnis et Chloe.
In recent years, the list of conductors who have lent their batons to NWS reads like a who’s who of the world’s most musically literate: Lidiya Yankovskaya, Dalia Stasevska, Gemma New, Tianyi Lu, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Edwin Outwater, Andrew Grams and Manfred Honeck. Each has imparted their own model of orchestral rigor; each has left behind distinct bits of repertoire and unique euphonious aesthetics.
As musical headmaster at NWS, it has been up to Stephane Deneve to first get to know these instrumentalists. He then has had to consolidate these many orchestral guest voices and methods in order to meet these young musicians where they are. A curricula has emerged. It amounts to a kind of musical boot camp – a testing of emotional and physical range – by way of a regular helping of legacy.
This generation of NWS musicians is ever ready to carry on traditions. Tonight, they join O’Connor in carrying on Lieberson and Pablo Neruda, and Maurice Ravel now and his symphonie choregraphique.
Ravel runs the gamut of orchestral limits in Daphnis et Chloe; NWS hits musical pay dirt at the “Danse guerriere” of Part II, and a high watermark in Part III. Woodwinds that usually get select use or see journeyman work have expanded play in this piece; the piccolo, alto flute, and E-Flat clarinet gave clear and accurate renditions in the “Pantomime” (Les amours de Pan et Syrinx) and the “Bacchanale” toward the end. NWS Fellow Jamie Kim’s alto flute playing expands on the idea of a seductive sunrise here, as does Elizabeth McCormack’s playing on flute. The contrabasson was finely in rhythm and spirit with the lower basses in Suite No. 2.
Those double basses maintained their pizzicati (in piano) to start Lever du jour in an impressive display of unison timing, and rhythmic sensibility. This seemed to be a restating of the groundedness displayed by this orchestra for Lieberson and O’Connor.
Deneve corked and uncorked his trunk, maybe mimicking the off-kilter 5/4, as if to crank every last bit of muscle from these players to end the “Danse general.” The percussion section and choir worked-up to a triple overheard soundwave that was striking for its form and fidelity to Ravel’s writing.
Home has so many possibilities, all to meet our basic needs. In many forms of partner dancing, home is the beginning and ending position – face to face. Home can be the human body, a safe harbor and center of comfort in physiology and biology. The laboratory is home to the chemist – a space for creating, experimenting. In music, home can be the tonal center, or tonic – a place of rest and stability. In baseball, home is...well, the object of the game.
It is just as well that these New World Symphony Fellows have made a second home of the instrumental zurkhaneh. It is just as well that they are up to the heavy lifting of bridging cultural gaps, showing me my own culture, looking so long at these pictures of you – carrying on traditions. It is just as well...because our legacies are bound together, and meet somewhere like home.
Peter Leiberson (1946-2011) - Neruda Songs (2005)
“If your eyes were not the color of the moon”
“Love, love, the clouds went up the tower of the sky”
“Don’t go far off, not even for a day”
“And now your mine. Rest with your dream in my dream”
“My love, if I die and you don’t”
Stephane Deneve, conductor
Kelley O’Conner, mezzo-soprano
Joseph Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) - Daphnis et Chloe: The complete ballet (1912)
Stephane Deneve, conductor
Master Chorale of South Florida
Brett Karlin, chorus master
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| Ravel: Daphnis & Chloe - New World Symphony, Stephane Deneve (Photo: Alex Markow, courtesy of New World Symphony) |
New World Symphony
The New World Symphony (NWS) is an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida. Founded in 1987 by Michael Tilson Thomas and Lin and Ted Arison, NWS has helped launch the careers of nearly 1,300 alumni worldwide. In fall 2022 Stéphane Denève was named Artistic Director of the New World Symphony.
NWS is a training ensemble for young musicians in preparation for professional careers in classical music. Since 2011, the New World Symphony has its headquarters in the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach, Florida. The orchestra presents a season of concerts from September to May at the 756-seat concert hall of the New World Center, including full-orchestra concerts, a chamber music series, a new music series, percussion consort series, small ensemble concerts, a family series, and special festivals and recitals.
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