Mostly Hispanic Songs from New Moon Duo

Last night at the Old First Presbyterian Church, Old First Concerts (O1C) concluded its February schedule with a performance by the New Moon Duo entitled Canto Caló. The duo consists of mezzo Melinda Becker, who last appeared in an O1C concert this past June, and pianist Anne Rainwater. For this program they were joined by cellist Natalie Raney, who appeared in three of the selections on the program.

The title of the program was taken from the title of a song cycle by Nicolas Lell Benavides being given its world premiere performance. Caló is a dialect blend of Spanish and English that is encountered in New Mexico, which happens to be the home state of both Benavides and Becker. The three songs in the cycle are based on texts handed down through both of these artists’ respective grandparents.

I have been following Benavides’ work ever since he and Danny Clay became the “founding fathers” of the Guerrilla Composers Guild. Much of the repertoire I have followed has been in the art song genre. I am delighted to report that he has yet to find a groove into which he can settle comfortably. Instead, each new vocal composition seems to establish its own unique relationship between words and music, the only common attribute is that the music consistently supports comprehension of the words, rather than obscuring them.

That said I have to confess that I felt a bit like an outsider while listening to Canto Caló. In the late Eighties my wife and I would visit New Mexico regularly, primarily to go the the summer opera performances in Santa Fe. On a few occasions we drove to different regions of the state and began to get the impression that many of those regions were self-contained enclaves. There were, of course, trappings of statewide government in Santa Fe itself; but that was just because it was the state capitol. Our travels ultimately went as far south as Las Cruces and as far North as Raton; and each place we visited, including Native American communities, had its own individuality.

As a result I found that I could appreciate a strong sense of singular personality behind of each of the texts that Benavides had set. However, the cultural context behind each of those texts was remote to me, simply because I am still overwhelmed by the demographic diversity of the state. Nevertheless, as a musician Benavides has long had a knack for presenting the intensely personal in an accessible setting. Becker clearly appreciated that knack and extended it through the minimal but highly informed body language she brought to performing all three of the songs in the collection. This is one world premiere composition that I would really like to encounter in future performance settings.

At the same time, that underlying stamp of individual uniqueness found its way into every other selection on the program. That included the one composition on the program by a composer with no “Hispanic connection,” Johannes Brahms. Nevertheless, that connection could be found in one of the texts Brahms had set, if not in Brahms himself. The selection was the pair of Opus 91 songs, which Brahms composed for alto voice, viola, and piano. The second of these songs, “Geistliches Wiegenlied” (sacred cradle song) set the poem “Die ihr schwebet” (ye who float), which is Emanuel Geibel’s paraphrase of a song that Lope de Vega included in his Cantarcillo de la Virgen (little song of the Virgin).

Raney did not have to apologize for playing the viola part on her cello. Both instruments have the strings tuned to the same pitches, just spaced an octave apart. Given the number of times I have listened to Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo cello suites played by a violist, I would say that turnabout was fair play! In “Geistliches Wiegenlied” Raney was responsible for how Brahms chose to interleave his own melodic line for Geibel’s text with the Christmas carol “Joseph, lieber Joseph mein” (Joseph dearest, Joseph mine); and she delivered that carol in all of its simplicity without the slightest hint of mawkishness, allowing Becker to offer Geibel’s text with just the right balance of innocence and profundity.

If the Brahms selection allowed the listener to think back to medieval origins, Raney also joined Becker and Rainwater in a performance of music from the Spanish baroque period, “Filis yo tengo” (Filis, I have), an engaging love poem set to the music of Clemente Imaña. The remaining selections were all taken from the twentieth century. That included six of the seven Spanish folksongs set by Manuel de Falla, into which Raney judiciously added the cello in appropriate places. Without the cello Becker sang three of the settings from Enrique Granados’ Tonadillas al estilo antiguo collection and, at the other end of the century, two of Gabriela Lena Frank’s settings of four Andean songs with Quechuan texts collected and translated into Spanish by José María Arguedas.

The result was an evening of impressive variety, all given solid interpretation by Becker and Rainwater with judicious additions of cello performances by Raney.