Live Music: CSO plays Orff’s Carmina Burana
This is one of my favorite pieces of music, definitely my favorite choral piece. Based on a collection of secular poems collected by the monks of a Bavarian monastery in the 18th century, it sounds to me almost like a satire of Wagner, very funny, while still supplying a dizzying array of excellent music and ripe human sentiment. With a huge choir (maybe 160 singers?) and also a boys’ choir, it has to be a much less profitable and more difficult piece to perform than the nice two-piano Mozart concerto, featuring the conductor Jeffrey Cahane as one of the pianists, that was the introductory piece. So I’m surprised that the Carmina Burana is performed as often as it is – I’ll definitely jump at any chance I have to see it again.
