Orff: Carmina Burana [Original recording remastered]

It's sometimes easy to think that all professional recordings of a classical work, by a good orchestra, will sound much the same. How wrong can you be? This is, I think, the fourth or fifth recording of this work I've bought since the late sixties, and it blows all the others out of the water!

Not much else to add, really.

Okay, first, for the uninitiated, what is Carmina Burana? It is that piece of music which they play if someone (prizefighters love it) needs a particualrly ostentatious entrance. Those in the UK who remember the Old Spice ads of the 70's and 80's featuring a surfer - that's Carmina Burana; specifically the first and last track "O Fortuna", "Fortune, you are like the moon; waxing and waning, bringing one man good forune and the next man ill luck" being an approximate translation. It is one of those pieces everybody has heard if they watch television or films at all (Oh yes, John Boorman's Excalibur uses a version). So, subtle it ain't? Wrong! - it has some of the most beaufiful, subtle, sophisticated, and charming pieces of music in it. Dulchissimo was never a more appropriately named piece of music (Italian lit. most beautiful) and the Soprano handles it well. Thomas Allen does an excellent job: this is one of the performances that gave him his present fame. Andrew Preview, sorry, André Previn (Morcambe and Wise have a lot to answer for) is superb in his musical direction. The Roasting Swan (for the initiated) is almost too well performed and is a touch over-melodic for my taste, but any tenor seems to think it is his job to sing the part well. They miss Orff's point - the swan is on an open fire and should sound as if being roasted. For those wishing to become initiates then this is the recording to get, providing the sleeve notes are as good as they were uopn its original release which I had stolen. They explain the reasons for why it is part German part French and part Latin and provide all the translations (except for the odd word like Afna, for example). There is mystery, intrigue, and the occult associated with this piece of music. Religious fundamentalists and those offended by paganism avoid this. The setting is in part a drunken pagan feast and orgy. Who said classical music was boring - "felix conjunctio" being a particualry amusing euphemism for sex, which the translation sanitises, sadly. This is a bizarre piece of music with roasting swans singing, Abbots warning ironically against drinking in the middle of a feast (sum abbas) followed in quick order by a drinking song (in taverna), then a romance. The overall theme is the Dharma Chakra, or wheel of life. How Orff has crow-barred this Eastern mysticism into a pseudo-Christian setting, is beyond me. It shouldn't work. It is the most ridiculous pompous idea, founded on a myseriously discovered religious manuscript, so the story goes. However, the joy, energy, and exuberance evident throughout the piece (and clearly enjoyed by every memebr of every chorus and the orchestra right down to the triangle player!) carry it off. I have heard versions of this piece played too fast, too slowly or without paying sufficient attention to the meaning of the lyric. This is the definative recording, just check out a few text books on the subject, and has been for something like twenty years. There is very little wrong with this recording and most of it scores 100% in my book. Buy this work if - a) you are looking for a route into classical music, b) have heard the piece, half enjoyed it, but have never heard this recording, c) because it is a piece of recording history; almost a legend or d) because it is very good indeed.

This is one of those rare 'blow your socks off' pieces - and you either love it, or hate it. I love it!
This has one of the finest conductors, very skillfully guiding a superb choir and orchestra through all of the demanding requirements from this work. Excellent results all round, and my congratulations to all concerned.
Peter Keats