Composer Peter Lieberson based Neruda Songs on five love sonnets by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Symphony Nova Scotia honoured Lieberson’s memory with its first-ever performance of his Neruda Songs last night, which BBC magazine declared “some of the most sublimely beautiful pieces to be written in recent years.”
New York magazine wrote, "On an expanse of melancholy tenderness, Lieberson scatters brushstrokes of brassy dissonance, half-finished phrases, tremors and tremolos that flare and fade, as if the orchestra were dipping and dodging to follow the emotional contours of the vocal line."
XLV
No estés lejos de mí un sólo día, porque cómo,
porque, no sé decírtelo, es largo el día,
y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones
cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.
No te vayas por una hora porque entonces
en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo
y tal vez todo el humo que anda buscando casa
venga a matar aún mi corazón perdido.
