Orff reviews

Orff's Die Kluge conducted by Kegel

You’ll find this 1942 stage work (part music hall, part fairytale) either wacky entertainment, or a trashy nadir of German musical culture. Excellent performances.

Malcolm Hayes

Orff's Trionfi Trilogy

A punchy, serviceable Carmina, valuably coupled with at times electrifying accounts of the two other parts of Orff’s Trionfi trilogy. The sound is full of visceral impact.

Terry Blain

Orff: Carmina Burana

Jos van Immerseel plus Anima Eterna spells revisionism, and that is what you get here: a Carmina Burana retooled with instruments of its period, and stripped of back-projected late-Romantic cushiness. The opening ‘O Fortuna’ is less of a juggernaut than usual, the combination of raw-edged, 1930s percussion with a smallish number of voices (three dozen) creating a more tribal, elemental feel than in big, ‘symphonic’ readings of the music.

Orff

Orff

There are plenty of good things in this new Carmina. Top-flight percussion playing, for one: in ‘Fortune piango vulnera’ it’s executed with sniper-like accuracy.

Hans Graf’s tempos are also excellent – he draws a wider range of moods and colouration from this piece than most conductors. His contribution to baritone Rodion Pogossov’s ruminative ‘Omnia sol temperat’ shows exemplary sensitivity.

Orff: Ein Sommernachtstraum

Orff’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is exotically scored and sharply atmospheric. The spoken parts are in German, with no translation. A niche product, for Orff completists. Terry Blain

Orff: Carmina Burana

To celebrate New Year’s Eve 2004 in the Berlin Philharmonie, Simon Rattle conducted Orff’s Carmina Burana, a performance which was rush-released onto CD the following spring. Odd, then, that this DVD has taken so long to appear. Or perhaps not so odd, given the unsatisfyingly ragbag feel of the concert as a whole.

Orff: Carmina Burana

Much is made in the PR releases for this new CD of conductor Daniel Harding’s ‘lean, modern’ approach to Orff’s most popular work. It’s certainly a notably tight and disciplined performance, perhaps a little matter-of-fact in the opening two movements, though I like the way that Harding gets precision in the difficult choral staccato rhythms without being irritatingly punctilious.
Impressive, too, is the rapt account of ‘Veris leta facies’ as spring awakens, a draft of melancholy wafting through the forest.

Orff - Der Mond & Die Kluge

These classic accounts of music theatre pieces based on Grimm still sound fresh, with Der Mond being particularly absorbing. No texts are included. Christopher Dingle

Debussy, Delibes, Canteloube, Ravel, Stravinsky, Orff, R Strauss, Granados and Rodrigo

This CD represents something of a triumph not for one young artist but for two. ENO’s new music director, Edward Gardner, conducts the accompaniments, with the Academy of St Martin’s on fine form. But he’s unusually perceptive, looking out for everything of interest in the harmonies and textures to bring out, and he misses nothing.

Orff: Carmina Burana

Many things go right in this new Carmina Burana recording. Marin Alsop’s pacing of the opening ‘O Fortuna’ chorus is spot-on, and the choir avoids the quasi-Sprechgesang whispering tactics often employed to lend a false sense of tension and momentousness to their early utterances. Diction is excellent (especially among the men’s voices), as it is in ‘Omnia sol temperat’, sung by baritone Markus Eiche who phrases with scrupulous attention to the Latin text’s meaning. His attempted falsetto later in the beautiful ‘Dies, nox et omnia’ is, unfortunately, mildly risible.

Rachmaninov, Schubert, Massenet, Faure, Dvorak, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Donizetti, Orff, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ponce, Falla, Bizet, R Strauss

Joshua Bell’s fizzing account (on his Sony debut disc) of Bernstein’s West Side Story Fantasy is one of the all-time great violin recordings. Ever since, I’d rather hoped he might tackle some of the swashbuckling concerto repertoire – the Conus, Castelnuovo No. 2, Korngold or Khachaturian, for example. So my heart sank a little when I ran my eyes down the list of miniature sweetmeats presented here. Not that Bell’s playing is anything less than ravishing, but in truth there is very little to detain someone of his prodigious talents.

Orff: Carmina Burana

Simon Rattle’s Carmina Burana starts haltingly, with fussily emphasised pauses in the opening vocal tutti and a backward choral balance creating a muffled, frustratingly hemmedin impression. Subdued sound remains an issue throughout, but the performance itself (from three New Year concerts) soon slips into firmer focus, with whippy instrumental codas to the verses in ‘Fortune plango vulnera’, mellifluous vocal phrasing in the plainchant-influenced ‘Veris leta facies’ and a poised, pensive ‘Omnia sol temperat’ from baritone Christian

Orff: Carmina burana

Though it is usually performed in concert, Carl Orff intended Carmina burana to be staged, as it is in this 1975 German TV film of the 'scenic cantata which now transfers to DVD. The Munich Radio Orchestra, conducted by Kurt Eichhorn, playing off-screen throughout, delivers a delightfully fresh and invigorating performance of a score that, because of its success in Third Reich Germany, had then been largely ignored since the war.

Orff: Carmina Burana

The profane cantata which launched a thousand film scores, not to mention a steady stream of recordings, will set few listeners alight in this musicianly but hardly incandescent performance. Runnicles clearly cares about the continuity which drives Orff's cleverly selected sequences; fortune's all-encompassing sway has a clean momentum, and the unstoppable kindling of desire at the court of love moves from discreet sensual throb to crisp pelvic thrusts.

Orff: Carmina Burana

The profane cantata which launched a thousand film scores, not to mention a steady stream of recordings, will set few listeners alight in this musicianly but hardly incandescent performance. Runnicles clearly cares about the continuity which drives Orff's cleverly selected sequences; fortune's all-encompassing sway has a clean momentum, and the unstoppable kindling of desire at the court of love moves from discreet sensual throb to crisp pelvic thrusts.

Orff: Carmina burana

On paper, the refined orchestral playing of the Vienna Philharmonic would appear inappropriate to OrfFs consciously primitive sound world. But after a somewhat flaccid opening, Previn encourages his forces to project both the exuberance and tenderness of the music with impressive effect. In some numbers, though, this live recording places the soloists too far forward in relation to the orchestra, and, in general, Previn's 1974 version for EMI still offers one of the most satisfying performances of this work. Erik Levi

Orff: Carmina Burana

For those wary of the more raucous aspects of Orff’s scenic cantata in many of its recorded manifestations, this new account might provide the answer. With a discography currently focusing on the high-minded German repertoire of Beethoven, Wagner, Schumann, Strauss and Pfitzner, Christian Thielemann here shifts to what some see as music’s equivalent to the Munich Beer Festival.

Orff: Carmina Burana

It is the music, not the message, that has given Carl Orff’s Carmina burana enduring popularity since its first performance in 1937. The tramping rhythms, simple harmonies and brutish melodies have made it one of the few pieces of serious music from the modern era to have won truly popular acclaim – until the world discovered Górecki, that is. The hi-fi era brought fresh devotees, as the massive chorus of ‘O Fortuna’ joined the ranks of the ‘Dies Irae’ from Verdi’s Requiem and the opening peroration of Also sprach Zarathustra as music to shake the floorboards and show off your woofers.

Orff: Carmina Burana; Catulli carmina; Dithyrambi

It is the music, not the message, that has given Carl Orff’s Carmina burana enduring popularity since its first performance in 1937. The tramping rhythms, simple harmonies and brutish melodies have made it one of the few pieces of serious music from the modern era to have won truly popular acclaim – until the world discovered Górecki, that is. The hi-fi era brought fresh devotees, as the massive chorus of ‘O Fortuna’ joined the ranks of the ‘Dies Irae’ from Verdi’s Requiem and the opening peroration of Also sprach Zarathustra as music to shake the floorboards and show off your woofers.

Orff: Carmina Burana

It is the music, not the message, that has given Carl Orff’s Carmina burana enduring popularity since its first performance in 1937. The tramping rhythms, simple harmonies and brutish melodies have made it one of the few pieces of serious music from the modern era to have won truly popular acclaim – until the world discovered Górecki, that is. The hi-fi era brought fresh devotees, as the massive chorus of ‘O Fortuna’ joined the ranks of the ‘Dies Irae’ from Verdi’s Requiem and the opening peroration of Also sprach Zarathustra as music to shake the floorboards and show off your woofers.

Orff: Carmina Burana

What is it about Carmina Burana? Only two years ago Decca dredged up an old recording (reviewed in March 95), put it in a new box with a semi-naked girl on the front, and launched it with a TV advertising campaign. Now EMI have put Carl Orff’s popular barnstormer into a glossy fold-out case, extravagantly decorated with astrological charts and yet more naked women, this time draped in red roses.

Orff/Egk

This stylish, snappy performance captures well the wit and drama of Orff’s wartime settings of Catullus (oddly, the Russian Front was in full swing when this raunchy work had its 1943 Leipzig premiere). The chorus is characterful and amiably raucous; Jochum’s percussive accompaniment is suitably punchy. Solos are outstanding: Auger sad, tender, huskily appealing; Ochman (as ever) clear as a bell in his melismatic wooing and cooing.

Orff/Ravel

Carl Orff’s virile and physical cantata Carmina Burana (‘profane songs to be sung by singers and chorus accompanied by instruments and magic tableaux’) remains as popular as ever. This lyrically responsive and detailed version by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos is highly recommendable. It has the benefit of an outstanding quartet of soloists plus the New Philharmonia Chorus and Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir on top form. Ravel’s obsessively rhythmic Bolero provides an appropriate filler. Ates Orga