Fabio Luisi, Dallas Symphony pair Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ with its rarely heard sequel
‘Catulli Carmina’ includes ‘speech singing’ and unusual instrumentation.
Music director Fabio Luisi led soloists, along with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Chorus and Dallas Symphony Children's Chorus in Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana' at the Meyerson Symphony Center on May 11, 2023.(Sylvia Elzafon / Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
Ours isn’t an age that values subtlety. Which makes Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, with its pounding, pulsing, chattering, wailing primitivism and folksongish tunes, a perfect contemporary soundtrack. It’s got sex and drinking, too.
Composed in 1937, Carmina has long been a favorite of audiences, and a regular entry in Dallas Symphony Orchestra seasons. It was back Thursday night at the Meyerson Symphony Center, paired with Catulli Carmina, the rarely done sequel the German composer assembled six years later. (Orff subsequently added Trionfo di Afrodite to complete a theatrical triptych he collectively titled Trionfi.)
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Music director Fabio Luisi conducted, with the Dallas Symphony Chorus (Anthony Blake Clark, guest director) and Dallas Symphony Children’s Chorus (Ellie Lin, artistic director). Soloists were soprano Audrey Luna, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, tenor Herbert Lippert and baritone Sean Michael Plumb. To keep the audience from deserting after the popular piece, Catulli was performed first.
Common to both works are poems sometimes romantic, sometimes earthy, occasionally frankly sexual. Carmina Burana mixes medieval Latin and Middle High German texts about fickle fate, drinking and love both emotional and carnal.
The core of Catulli Carmina is a set of 1st century B.C. poems by Catullus, a slightly younger contemporary of Julius Caesar. Tenor and soprano soloists evoke the poet’s ultimately doomed relationship with a married woman, the Greek-like chorus setting scenes and commenting.
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Orff wrote his own Latin verses for the prologue, in which the chorus portrays young men and young girls aflame with love, and old men pooh-poohing romantic illusions. Some of the flirtations are physiologically explicit; at least one anatomical term was discreetly eschewed in the projected translations.
In addition to usual choral writing, there are passages of Sprechstimme — more or less tuned speech — for both soloists and chorus, plus some specified shouts, laughter and miscellaneous crowd noise. The prologue and brief epilogue are accompanied only by four pianos and an array of tuned and untuned percussion; the central section is unaccompanied.
(From right) Pianists Mikhail Berestnev, Anastasia Markina, Gabriel Sanchez and Benjamin Loeb performed with percussionists of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Carl Orff's 'Catulli Carmina' at the Meyerson Symphony Center on May 11, 2023.(Sylvia Elzafon / Dallas Symphony Orchestra)
With a lot of young people in attendance, the audience for Thursday night’s Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert was certainly enthusiastic. But guest conductor Simone Young’s big and rather generalized gestures didn’t get the most disciplined playing from the orchestra.
Enrico Lopez-Yanez must make music. Principal conductor of Dallas Symphony Presents, a recent creation that operates alongside the orchestra’s pops series, he grew up traveling from one opera house to another with his father, tenor Jorge Lopez-Yanez. His mother, Ruth Weber, is a singer, songwriter, teacher and choir director living in San Diego.
Johannes Brahms' German Requiem was performed Thursday night by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, led by music director Fabio Luisi. Soloists were soprano Golda Schultz and baritone Matthias Goerne.
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Whatever one’s personal feelings about the works, Luisi clearly took both very seriously, whipping up visceral energies and enormous excitement from both singers and orchestra, but also real subtleties. Big chords released into the prolonged glow of the Meyerson acoustics were breathtaking.
Most of the Dallas Symphony Chorus singers had probably done Carmina at least once, but Catulli was probably new to almost everyone — and it’s a big challenge linguistically, rhythmically and dramatically. Coordination slipped forgivably in a couple of frenzied spots, but in general, the singing was impressively secure and nimble, and sometimes hair-raising. The Children’s Chorus supplied sweet innocence.
In both works, Luna’s soprano could glow sweetly or blaze as needed. I prefer a high tenor for the famous roasting swan aria in Carmina, but Costanzo’s countertenor had apt tang. Lippert supplied a sinewy tenor elsewhere, Plumb a lyric baritone that dispatched tenor-range passages with amazing power.
A four concert mini-festival of modern composers is coming to Southern Methodist University’s Caruth Auditorium. It’s the work of a contemporary music outfit called ensembleNEWSRQO, organized and led by Dallas musicians Samantha Bennett (a violinist in the Dallas Opera Orchestra and frequent sub in the area) and George Nickson (principal percussionist of the Dallas Symphony).
You might think a concert of 16th-century English church music, in Latin — with a few pieces barely tipping into the 17th century — too esoteric to attract much of a crowd. But on international tours and recordings the British chamber choir known as the Tallis Scholars has “sold” renaissance music with highly polished and expressive performances. Their Sunday evening concert at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas drew a sizable and enthusiastic audience.
With a lot of young people in attendance, the audience for Thursday night’s Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert was certainly enthusiastic. But guest conductor Simone Young’s big and rather generalized gestures didn’t get the most disciplined playing from the orchestra.
Musically, the concert presented Wednesday night by cellist Steven Isserlis and Metamorphosis Dallas chamber orchestra was very fine indeed. But non-musical aspects of the evening, sponsored by Texas Cellos, sometimes furrowed a brow.
Enrico Lopez-Yanez must make music. Principal conductor of Dallas Symphony Presents, a recent creation that operates alongside the orchestra’s pops series, he grew up traveling from one opera house to another with his father, tenor Jorge Lopez-Yanez. His mother, Ruth Weber, is a singer, songwriter, teacher and choir director living in San Diego.
Details
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St., Dallas. $39 to $170. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.
Scott Cantrell, Special Contributor. Former staff classical music critic Scott Cantrell continues contributing as a freelance writer on classical music and art. His classical music reporting is supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. The News makes all editorial decisions.
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