Orff - Carmina Burana

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2007-03-01 rating:
First-Rate 'Carmina Burana' in First-Rate Sound
What is it about Carmina Burana that makes it so popular? I can still remember hearing it the first time when I was a college student in the 1950s and it was like being hit in the gut. It became a huge hit on our campus and I even participated in a performance of it with student forces. I also remember one night of drinking and snuggling to strains of Orff's masterpiece; the music seemed particularly appropriate somehow. In the ensuing more than fifty years I've never heard or seen a bad performance of it. Something about it makes it bullet-proof. And there's something for everyone in the score: the big lush orchestral and choral outbursts, the chamber music passages with delicate bell sounds, the pounding drums, the passages for almost-unaccompanied solo voices and best of all the many memorable melodies and driving rhythms. And then there's the text which is lewd, lascivious, religious, celebratory, amorous, tender, primitive, barbarous and everything in between. That the text is in Latin and old German makes it more palatable for the prudes amongst us. (Although I remember shocking a little old lady with an off-the-cuff translation of one of the more, erm, interesting bits.) And who can forget the roast swan?

So, how do Alsop and Bournemouth orchestra, chorus, children's chorus and soloists do with this score. Magnificently! There is plenty of vigor and snap in the louder parts and delicate tenderness in such passages as the Vera leta facies. Alsop certainly has the measure of the piece. I mustn't forget to mention the fine soloists: Claire Rutter, soprano; Tom Randle, tenor (who was so wonderful in the recent DVD of Britten's 'Gloriana'; here a fine roast swan), and Markus Eiche, baritone. And the sound recording is possibly the best feature of all even though it is not in SACD. This is a clear, rich, present, resounding and yet transparent sound world. Huzzah to the producer, Tim Handley, and the engineer, Phil Rowlands.

This is a no-brainer: Buy it!

Scott Morrison

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