Carl Orff: |Carmina Burana

No other famous composition left behind traditional sound ideals as radically as Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana which received its debut performance in 1937. Rondeau Production’s recording of this work unites Lower Saxony’s two renowned choirs: the Mädchenchor Hannover (Hanover Girls Choir) and the Knabenchor Hannover (Hanover Boys Choir), both of which are highly acclaimed not only within the limits of their home-state; they are joined here by the NDR Radiophilharmonie (North German Radio Symphony Orchestra) under the baton of their internationally renowned conductor, Eiji Oue. This production brings together the choirs’ self-assured poise and vividly glowing enthusiasm and the orchestra’s boundless energy: the shattering might of the opening and closing chorus, the hymn to Fortuna, with its unwieldy and cumbersome fourths and fifths in the vocal parts and with its constant repetitions sets off ecstatic explosions of energy in the choir. Here, all the force and crudeness of the Middle Ages erupts, while later their tenderness and mildness are brilliantly depicted by the transparent voices of the boy sopranos.