An Evening With Carmina Burana

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana brought many a western classical music enthusiast to the Jamshed Bhabha concert hall of the NCPA in Mumbai. One of the most popular pieces of music written in the twentieth century, Carmina Burana was performed by the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) at its 12th Opera Season. The orchestra was conducted by Marat Bisengaliev and was performed by members of the Kazakh State Philharmonic Capella, the Paranjoti Academy Chorus, Living Voices and the Stop-Gaps Cultural Academy with Chorus Masters, Riccardo Bonci and Diego Mingolla.

Carmina Burana is a collection of 24 poems set to music and deals with the pleasures of love, lust and drinking. It is portrayed with the juxtaposing of large orchestral and choral forces and the simplicity of individual voices. This work which was written for upto 300 performers on stage is not very complex to follow. In fact its beauty lies in its simplicity and its driving rhythms. O Fortuna, dedicated to the Goddess of Fortune is the opening and closing piece of the performance and is very familiar to listeners worldwide as excerpts from it have often been used in films and in advertisements. It is grand and sections with the Timpani stir the soul.

The SOI delivered the goods in all respects. The ensemble achieves a full and enjoyable soundscape, which is also very dramatic in parts. Traces of a Gregorian chant were easily followed with a baritone solo, sung with ease by Javier Arrey. The music proceeds from the lovely baritone to the tenor Fillipo Adami who sings the lament of the swan but not convincingly enough. Even Annamaria Dell'Oste, the soprano despite her best efforts, was not quite a match to the fabulous baritone.

Carmina Burana, apart from being a unique work in several ways is also challenging since it goes through many changes of pace and mood. It is very dynamic. The performance was overall a competent one, the exception being the relatively small size of the chorus. But understandably, the logistics of scaling up can be daunting. In spite of the limitations the SOI might face, it is nevertheless getting more and more accomplished. It was most certainly an enjoyable evening with Carmina Burana.