Sonic surprises: Berkeley Symphony's takes on climate crisis, natural world in Spring's Awakening concert

Tick, tick. Coo, coo. Crackle … pop! Mr. President … 

A clock’s tick, a bird’s call, a fire’s crackle and the words of a former United States Senator — it’s not what you would expect from a symphony performance. The Berkeley Symphony’s March 16 Spring’s Awakening concert embraced these sonic surprises, focusing on the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it. Music director Joseph Young conducted the innovative programming in First Congregational Church, performing Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Cantus Arcticus,” Huang Ruo’s “Tipping Point: A Climate-Crisis Symphony” and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, or “Spring Symphony.”

The first piece, “Cantus Arcticus,” by contemporary composer Rautavaara combined technology with classical music. Beginning in “The Bog,” the flute solo captured an eerie beauty, reflecting nature’s alluring yet incomprehensible danger. As taped recordings of birdsong from the Arctic Circle and Finnish marshes intertwined with instruments, it became difficult to distinguish if the rustling wind was coming from the recording or the clarinets. Precise strums of harp took listeners on a mystical traipse into marshy hinterlands. The second movement, “Melancholy,” combined bird cries with temperate strings, propelling the orchestra to the final movement, “Migrating Swans.” Balancing the dynamics of swan and instrument, the orchestra followed the swell of the whooper swan’s whoop whoop calls, leaving a lasting resonance within the cavernous chapel. The Finnish composer’s piece is a celebration of the natural world and a parallel for humanity’s own place within it: sometimes apart, sometimes a part.  

Humanity’s relationship to the environment was further explored in “Tipping Point.” In a video message preceding the performance, Huang — inspired during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to compose the symphony — discussed the “ongoing pandemic that is the climate crisis” and what he hoped “Tipping Point” would achieve: “If I can change one person’s mind, I succeeded. If I bring awareness to a few people, (and) they look out to do something differently, to help society, to help our world, I succeeded. This is something as an artist I feel I must do.”

“Tipping Point” began with the voice of former United State’s Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma denying climate change in a 2015 speech. Following the ominous excerpt, the strings’ plosive tremolos and the ceaseless tick, tick, tick of a clock’s second hand punctuate the air. Each slash of the bow was a march toward destruction, a precursor to something deadly, a second closer to the Doomsday Clock’s midnight stroke.

Using the waterphone — metallic screeching commonly used for horror movie soundtracks — and the bullroarer, the Berkeley Symphony took audiences on a terrifying pendulum back and forth from the tipping point of environmental disaster. Right as the orchestra fell into a calamitous alarm, the violins turned to a hopeful melody, coincidentally reflected in a surge of sunlight streaming into the chapel. Insistent trombones mimicked a call to action as a forest wildfire recording played. While the final warning gong echoed, the audience was left to ruminate among the crackle of flame reverberating in eardrums, pops so present it was almost felt in the body.

The final piece, Schumann’s “Spring Symphony,” was a throwback to a Romantic-era composer depicting the timeless rejuvenation of spring. From an airy, galloping first movement, the audience was taken to the second movement’s soothing traipse through idyllic fields. The symphony concluded with a powerful finale, bringing the audience to their feet. 

The Berkeley Symphony did what it aimed to do: It brought a community together through diverse, impactful music. Children giggled as birdsong from “Cantus Arcticus” fluttered through the foyer during intermission. Patrons submitted raffle tickets for a chance to win artwork by Bay Area artist and Berkeley Symphony partner Rigel Stuhmiller. Besides appreciating art in the Berkeley community, the concert was a meditation on the wider, global community. Classical pieces were paired with contemporary musical activism so that children in coming generations might giggle to birdsong not only in a recording, but in nature itself.