Ailyn Pérez shows off star power with New Century ensemble
The obvious answer — remarkable vocal talent, combined with radiance and charm — was on display in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church on Thursday night, when Pérez joined the New Century Chamber Orchestra for a first-rate season-opening program.
The entire evening, for that matter, was short but wonderfully satisfying, and a reminder of the artistic rewards that have continued to accrue from the appointment of Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg as the string ensemble’s music director.
Pérez’s performance superbly tracked the emotional ups and downs of this fraught episode, infusing the composer’s expansive lyrical phrases with a blend of reflectiveness and urgency, and turning the character’s moments of heightened anxiety into something poignant and true.
The instrumental parts of the program began with a hugely powerful account of Arvo Pärt’s “Trisagion,” a 14-minute meditation shot through with strains of longing and vibrant spirituality.
For a listener generally impatient with Pärt’s poker-faced religious minimalism, this was a revelation — rhetorically brilliant, harmonically simple but infinitely varied in its textural palette — and the ensemble played it magnificently.
Jennifer Higdon, whose stint as this season’s featured composer will conclude in May with a commissioned world premiere, was represented by three short excerpts from earlier works, strung together as a sort of potpourri.