Prom 69: Orff – Carmina Burana (6.09.15)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

19:30
Royal Albert Hall

Trumpeter Alison Balsom joins the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Keith Lockhart live at the BBC Proms, which includes a newly commissioned concerto by Guy Barker.


Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre
Guy Barker: The Lanterne of Light (BBC commission: world premiere)
Orff: Carmina Burana

Charles Mutter (violin)
Alison Balsom (trumpet)
Olena Tokar (soprano)
Thomas Walker (tenor)
Benjamin Appl (baritone)
Southend Boys' Choir
Southend Girls' Choir
BBC Concert Orchestra
BBC Symphony Chorus
London Philharmonic Choir
Keith Lockhart (conductor)

This year's free Prom is an ideal opportunity to introduce family and friends to classical music. Carmina burana is as musically inventive as it is irreverent - a choral cantata based on a medieval text charting the joys, fickleness and excesses of human life. The BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer-in-Association Guy Barker provides a new concerto for trumpet virtuoso Alison Balsom and the orchestra's own Charles Mutter is the soloist in Saint-Saëns's devilish Danse macabre.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

This year's free Prom is an ideal opportunity to introduce family and friends to classical music.

A laudable idea, and I hope it works. However, I suspect the cost is rarely the perceived barrier.

I remember my teenage years when my peers would scoff at "classical myüüüüsic". That had nothing whatever to do with the cost of the concerts.

Still, it may work.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I have fond memories of a 1987 performance of this work. I had moved to teach in a school in Scarborough, and the North Yorkshire Chorus wanted a boys' choir to supplement their excellent sound. The county music advisor heard that I had created separate boys' and girls' junior choirs at the school, and suggested we might be able to fill the role. Although rehearsing it was like trying to persuade a cat to sit still, the result was thrilling, and was subsequently broadcast on Radio York.

So please forget the overblown use of the opening, and judge the work on its merits.

[MrGongGong]

The rice is included

[bluestateprommer]

Good start to this Prom, with Charles Mutter dispatching CS-S's Danse Macabre neatly, granted that it's a work that doesn't reasonably lend itself to "over-interpretation". I've heard the original song setting by CS-S that Ian Skelly mentioned in one recording; good move on CS-S's part to make a symphonic poem out of it.

EA makes a very good point about Carmina Burana, as once past the opening, it's always bracing to remember how much of Carmina Burana is actually pretty quiet, and not at all as OTT as the opening "O, Fortuna".

Part 2: unfortunately, my internet connection played havoc with me at times during the 2nd movement of the new Guy Barker work, so I have to go back to give it a full proper airing w/o involuntary interruption. With that in mind, while I'm not at all sure of the theme of the "seven deadly sins" featuring in GB's work, on its own, it's an OK, if a bit prolonged, showcase for Alison Balsom, who performed very well (one or two cracked notes in the heat of the moment aside). I caught the occasional whiff of Messiaen in Barker's orchestration, besides a general sense of the "Boston Pops" about it (and the reference is deliberate, of course, since Keith Lockhart is music director of the Boston Pops). Definitely fitting the general theme of audience-friendly new commissions by The Proms this year, in its harmonic sense. There was applause from the audience after the first section, but given that this is a world premiere, that's eminently forgivable here.

Very interesting interval talk about Carl Orff and Carmina Burana, with Christopher Cook, Graham Lack, and Tony Palmer doing the right thing by taking both composer and work seriously.

Part 3: so the wheel of fortune has completed its latest turn. Solid, generally well done and well-paced Carmina Burana from all involved, although Benjamin Appl had a strange high-register crack at one point. According to Ian Skelly, BA apparently indulged in some on-stage "method acting" in the tavern scene, I gather.

BTW, FWIW, a check of the Proms archive reveals only 4 prior complete performances of Carmina Burana, with the last complete performance from 1998. (Basil Cameron led the first complete performance in 1958.) So one can't accuse The Proms of over-programming this work during its history.

[Barbirollians]

With a bit of luck it will not be heard again for 20years.

[Roehre]

With a bit of luck it will not be heard again for 20years.

[gurnemanz]

I remember enjoying a staged version in Germany (Nürnberg Opera House) about 45 years ago.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I remember enjoying a staged version in Germany (Nürnberg Opera House) about 45 years ago.

Bearing in mind the content of the libretto, the mind boggles at what a staged performance might involve.

[VodkaDilc]

I listened to this performance of Carmina Burana and found it immensely enjoyable. There are many who find fault with it, but it has some wonderful moments. Having conducted performances with both adult and school choirs, I can say that it always goes down well with the singers.

I thought the speeds were on the fast side and the conductor seemed to ignore quite a few of the pauses which are marked in the score - but the excitement was captured well. I wish I had booked for that Prom, but I could not justify three visits in one week - and there is some splendid stuff programmed this week.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I listened to this performance of Carmina Burana and found it immensely enjoyable. There are many who find fault with it, but it has some wonderful moments. Having conducted performances with both adult and school choirs, I can say that it always goes down well with the singers.

I thought the speeds were on the fast side and the conductor seemed to ignore quite a few of the pauses which are marked in the score - but the excitement was captured well. I wish I had booked for that Prom, but I could not justify three visits in one week - and there is some splendid stuff programmed this week.

[Barbirollians]

I cannot abide the work and never have been able to - always appears to be much more fun to perform than listen to .

[ardcarp]

always appears to be much more fun to perform than listen to

Can't quite agree with that, Barbs. It seems to have huge popular appeal, and snippets have been used (especially O Fortuna) countless times as background music to films, TV programmes and the like. It's also great for audiences to watch, (percussion plus strangulated singer). IMO it was a brilliantly conceived idea...i.e Orff's ostinati coupled with the highly un-monkish monastic text. Sadly (or maybe luckily) it could only be done once. Subsequent attempts (including Orff's own?) never quite made it.

[Ferretfancy]

In the early days of stereo there was a brief vogue for recordings of Orff. Wolfgang Sawallisch had already made a fine mono recording of Carmina Burana, and EMI's Columbia label issued an impressive stereo recording of Die Kluge with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. They followed this with Der Mond, which probably came near to Carmina Burana in style. The sound of a comet roaring down to awake the dead was a much heard demo at audio fairs.

I found them quite exciting at the time, and snapped them up in their brief appearance on CD, but alas they have not worn well, and the endless musical repetition and hectoring vocals have worn very thin. That said, the rendition of Carmina Burana's 'in trutina' by Virginia Babikian on Stokowski's recording is very affecting.

[Don Petter]

They followed this with Der Mond, which probably came near to Carmina Burana in style. The sound of a comet roaring down to awake the dead was a much heard demo at audio fairs.

That was the one where you could check your system's high frequency response with the aid of your (or a passing) dog. The dog could supposedly hear St Peter's thunderbolt before you could as it whistled down the scale from on high!

Still available on CD, and quite cheaply for a second hand copy:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00000DO6Y?keywords=mond%20kluge%20sawallish&qid=1441638767&ref_=sr_1_fkmr0_2&s=music&sr=1-2-fkmr0

I think the two works deserve to be better known by anyone who likes CB. Der Mond is more entertaining than the other, though you really need to have a German-English libretto to follow the humour of the plot. It seems some CD issues come with, some without.