Charles Roland Berry: Orchestral Music, Volume 1
Toccata Classics

That Charles Roland Berry titled his article contribution to the release booklet “Writing Music for People to Play and Hear” is telling: here's a composer who, with no compromise to the integrity of his material, wants his music to connect with immediacy and not be merely admired for its technical finesse. In that regard, the Boston-born composer (b. 1957) has much in common with an earlier figure such as Aaron Copland and a contemporary like Peter Boyer. While Berry's pieces are impeccable crafted, they're not dry academic exercises but rather highly personalized expressions that engage for their melodic content, embracing tone, and dramatic sweep. Based on the quality of the three works presented on this first volume of orchestral music, Berry deserves to be more widely known.

His development as a composer began in high school when a teacher whetted his appetite with harmonic choral music by Bach, Palestrina, Haydn, and others. In the ‘80s, he studied at University of California, Santa Barbara, privately studied with American symphonist Paul Creston, and, later in the decade, presented chamber concerts under the ‘Composers Anonymous' title that featured performances of early Berry works. Stints working for Tower Records and as a sales representative for classical labels were followed by a move to Seattle and a string of other jobs, with Berry composing throughout these transitions and writing his first three symphonies (the first two now withdrawn), a cello concerto, and smaller orchestral pieces.

A decade separates the writing of those earlier orchestral efforts and the fourth (2017) and fifth (2021) symphonies, both performed on this new recording and preceded by a rousing overture from 2003. All are first recordings, the Olympic Mountains Overture performed by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under Joel Eric Suben's direction, the fourth symphony by the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, and the fifth by Polish Wieniawski Philharmonic Orchestra of Lublin, both of those conducted by Theodore Kuchar. A programmatic element is present in some material, the overture a case in point (a wind machine was even utilized to suggest the sound of swirling snow above the tree line). Here Berry distills into enthralling musical form impressions of the Olympic National Park in Washington State, a setting near his home and one with which he's well acquainted. The majesty of the setting is vividly evoked in this twelve-minute tone painting, which makes full use of the timbral richness a full orchestra offers. As prominently featured as strings, brass, and woodwinds is the percussion section, and imaginative dashes of bassoon, saxophone, harp, and piano add enhancing hues to the picture.

Berry's fourth symphony is grounded in his interests in the pentacle and Freemasonry, the latter of which, in its second degree, focuses on the five senses. To that end, Berry's conceived each movement with a sense and corresponding element in mind. The listener's pulled in immediately by gracefully flowing strings in “Water - Taste” before agitation sets in with percussion and brass intimating the rise of turbulent waters. Perpetuating the calm with which the first movement ends, the delicate “Earth - Touch” conveys a lamenting quality in hushed utterances by oboe, cor anglais, and strings. The tone turns celebratory for the folk dance gestures of “Fire - Smell,” trumpet leading the alternately joyful, serene, and triumphant charge and the other instruments similarly engaged, after which a string quartet augments the orchestra to intensify the enrapturing aura of “Spirit - Sight”; disturbance arises, however, via the emergence of chromatic figures, though peacefulness eventually sets in once the struggles are resolved. “Air - Hearing” makes for a spirited, brass-heavy conclusion to the work, and as the performance finishes, it's easy to picture concertgoers wholly satisfied by the thirty-two-minute journey and grateful to the composer for fashioning such a scenic travelogue for them to enjoy.

In contrast to the other two works, Berry's Symphony No. 5 carries with it no programmatic dimension and instead presents itself as a pure half-hour expression in four movements. Animated by military snares and timpani accents, the “Allegro” initiates the work with no small amount of portent, as ominous string figures introduce dark shadings and a strong sense of tension destabilizes the material. With the advent of rhapsodic strings, the music begins to take on a rather Copland-esque character—never a bad thing—as it advances to its close. Woodwinds open the subsequent “Andante" arrestingly before the mood turns plaintive, with two beautiful oboe spotlights particularly memorable and the strings at their most lustrous. Pizzicato strings, trumpets, and percussion enliven an infectiously breezy third movement until the symphony reaches an energized, uplifting end with a third “Allegro,” French horns the centre around which the other instruments, tambourine and claves included, gather.

In these works there's no attempt to sound hip or trendy (in his words, “No attempt was made to sound modern, or to impress my contemporaries”), but it would be wrong to think of Berry's material as old-fashioned—classic would be the better term. As the recording ends, one can't help but wonder why material of this kind isn't more regularly included in symphony orchestras' set-lists. Finally, the fact that three recently written concertos for erhu, ondes Martenot, and duduk are scheduled to be part of Berry's recording series is cause for excitement. When, after all, was the last time you heard classical works created for any one of those instruments, let alone all three?

December 2022