Marika Kuzma returns to conduct at University of California

Marika Kuzma returns to conduct at University of California - Berkeley

by Ksenia Kyzyk

BERKELEY, Calif. - On May 4 at Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus of the University of California, conductor Marika Kuzma directed a performance of Paul Hindemith's "Requiem: For Those We Love," a musical setting of Walt Whitman's "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed." While this powerful work has been performed numerous times on the East Coast and in Europe, Ms. Kuzma's performance in Berkeley marked the California premiere of the requiem.

"A few mornings after September 11, I woke to hear the words of Whitman and Hindemith in my mind - "Lo! body and soul this land! Mighty Manhattan with spires..." - and couldn't put those words out of my mind for months. And so beginning in January, the chorus and I began the process of learning this poem and this piece of music together she wrote in her program notes.

"In the midst of heightened uncertainty, it has given us strength to intone Whitman's words. Despite the carnage he witnessed as a journalist during the Civil War and the grief he felt at the death of Abraham Lincoln, he continued to sing the praises of the American landscape and the good in its people," Ms. Kuzma explained. "It gives us strength to course through the richly complex harmonies of Hindemith. Despite the atrocities he witnessed in Nazi Germany and the grief he felt at the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he wrote the Requiem, Hindemith composed a piece of fierce energy and exuberance."

The University Chorus, an ensemble of 120 students and community members, was joined by a professional orchestra compring musicians from the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. One of the soloists was mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane, a faculty member at Stanford University who has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera and under such conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich, Michael Tilson, Thomas, William Christie, Helmut Rilling and Robert Shaw.

The baritone soloist, Christopheren Nomura, was recently hailed as one of classical music's "rising stars" by the Wall Street Journal and has performed internationally with such conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Sergiu Comissiona, Christopher Hogwood, and Ton Koopman.

"Chris Nomura was ideal for this piece" commented Ms. Kuzma. "Aside from having a beautiful and powerful voice, he has a very open heart and has a great love of artsong. He studied with the greatest interpreters: Fischer-Dieskau, Gerard Souzay. So his delivery of Whitman's poetry was so full of nuance and it was so genuine. I have never heard a longer silence at the end of any performance."

This year marked Ms. Kuzma's return to California after a year of teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she was invited to join its tenured music faculty. While at UVA, she directed its University Singers in a sold-out performance of Handel's "Messiah." Their spring concert, titled "Liturgies and Lovesongs," featured the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, selections by Bortniansky, Rakhmaninov and Lesia Dychko, and closed with Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms." Last May, she was an invited speaker at an international conference on the composer Dmitry Bortniansky at the Moscow Conservatory. "I was honored to represent America and the Ukrainian diaspora at the conference. The Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian musicologists there received me and my research with great warmth and respect," said Ms. Kuzma.

Ms. Kuzma returned to the University of California at Berkeley to accept a newly endowed chair: the Virginia Lew Chair of Music Performance. Her first engagement with her choirs last fall was a collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan in performances of Rameau's opera "Platee." The UC Chamber Chorus received praise in the Bay Area press for lending its "professional sound" and "handsome, full-voiced textures" to that production. Later, in March, the Chamber Chorus performed the world premiere of a work by the Argentine composer Jorge Liderman, a setting of the "Song of Songs." Critic Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote "The most stirring contribution of the evening was the beautifully nuanced singing of Marika Kuzma's UC Chamber Chorus."

For its final concert of the season on June 6, the Chamber Chorus performed a concert titled "Voices of Byzantium: from Mt. Athos to Kiev to Moscow" as part of the prestigious Berkeley Early Music Festival. Ms. Kuzma chose a program including ancient Greek chant, Kyivan and Znamenny chant, selections by Titov, Bortniansky and Berezovsky, because she felt that this repertoire - along with the repertoire spanning Gregorian chant to Monteverdi to Mozart - needed to be represented at a major international Early Music Festival.

Reflecting on her return to Berkeley, Ms. Kuzma states that "while I loved living on the East Coast last year and still think of it as home, I am happy to have returned to California for now. It has been a very full and gratifying year."

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