Customer Reviews

Carmina Burana

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You have never heard music, or at least felt it until you have experienced Orff's Carmina Burana. No matter your musical taste, you will feel this piece. It will resonate throughout you. This is the best, by far, recording of this spectacular choral triumph offered by Amazon. It was composed in 1936 from poems written in the 13th century by, "vagabond students, runaway monks, and defrocked priests." To make it even better it is sung, almost entirely, in Latin. You will come alive when you here this.

For a performance so outstanding, it's odd that this isn't better-known, for musical and sonic reasons.

Originally one of those quirky London Phase-4 issues, this CD seems to have been re-mixed. The chorus is in better balance here, and the soloists' considerable contributions come through very strongly.

Dorati was always tops in productions like this, and he and his forces sound like they're having a very good time...

...which is Orff's point, isn't it?

This recording dates back a few years -- like 25 or more. But it's held its own with many a newer rendition falling well short of Maestro Dorati's exciting musicianship, backed by top-notch singers and a very good orchestra and chorus. I know of only one recording made since this one that matches this version for overall effect -- Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on Telarc ... the others just don't make the grade. I notice this has been reissued on CD in as many as half-a-dozen incarnations; I guess the record industry knows a good performance when it has one!

The quality of the recording and performance here is superb. My only complaint is that the liner notes are somewhat minimal when it comes to the music itself. Carmina Burana is really a piece where you want to have the text in front of you for maximum enjoyment. But I wouldn't hesitate to buy other recordings in the Penguin Classics series. They always did good with me in books, and their presentation in recordings meets my expecations quite nicely.
(It is however, amusing to not the fake sticker on the front which informs you that this title is recommended by none other than the Penguin Guide to CDs!)

This performance is 5-star quality and I have no problems with the sound-quality either, but I'm simply not prepared to give 5 stars to a full-price production of Carmina Burana that does not include the words of the poems. If you just listen to this as music, you would have no way at all of telling what they are singing about. The poem about bemoaning the wounds of fortune is set to loud music and the poem about the happy face of spring to soft music. This music does not `express' its texts in any way, it only accompanies them, vivid though it undoubtedly is. The whole point of Carmina Burana, whether this was what the composer intended or not, is the words and not primarily the music. It would be more than unfair to compare either to bierkeller ballads or to rugby-club ditties, but the difference is still a question of quality not of type. These are popular verses, above average in originality and general interest but popular nonetheless, and what Orff has done is to provide them with musical settings that are original, striking, and strong and immediate in their impact, but really no more on an equal footing with the poems than the music to The Ball of Kirriemuir (in any of its versions) is on any equal footing with that.

For newcomers, 21 poems and two dance-interludes are enclosed, as if between book-ends, by a fatalistic poem about our general helplessness in the face of fate or fortune. The 13th-century poems are on standard students'-union themes of love and general indulgence, particularly the familiar erotic imagery of love's awakening in springtime. The overall message is an expanded version of Gaudeamus Igitur. The poems are not unduly explicit - I have some very much ruder ones by Dowland and Purcell - and although they were first discovered in a monastery at the start of the 19th century they are strictly pagan in their expression, with none of the religious/erotic sentiment that constitutes another tradition and is found even as late as, say, Handel's cantata Silete Venti. What the `love-in-the-springtime' numbers recall to me is an earlier Latin poem the Pervigilium Veneris (Love's Vigil), and nearly all the verses here are in Latin with a little early German and some proto-French. The music is aggressively simple with no counterpoint, thematic development or elaborate harmony, but it is a world away from the modern minimalist school of incessant repetition. The orchestration is garish and probably Mahler-influenced, but very few composers after Brahms escaped his long shadow totally and I'm quite sure I hear his Liebeslieder here and there.

One does not go wrong with Dorati, I find. He is dependable without being dull and exciting without being exhibitionist. Soloists and chorus are excellent, and a word should be put in particularly for the fine Southend Boys' Choir whom I have also heard recently in Sinopoli's great account of Mahler VIII. The recorded sound is fine and the RPO are on good form. There is a charming liner-note by John Berendt, all about himself and nothing about the music still less the poems. I still can't forgive the omission of these, because if this work means anything to you other than background-music there is no way of doing without them, and unless your Latin is good enough you need a translation as well. I have the words, my Latin is good enough but I have a translation anyway, and the disc is thoroughly recommendable in its own right.

If this CD's recording is from the concert in 76 then this is the best Carmina Burana recording ever! I've heard like 5 or 6 other interpretations but none compare to this one. In some pieces of music you can even hear that the silence between one note and another, as well as how much a note is stressed varies considerably from other interpretations. This is obviously due to Antal Dorati's conduction, giving this recording a special feeling that other recordings lack. If you really like Carmina Burana, this is the CD to buy... Trust me.

I got turned on to this music at a hockey game, I've been describing it as the "go king king go" song (cause that's what it sounded like when I first heard it in "Excaliber") and could never find it. Then heard it on a commercial when I was near a classical music type person and was able to buy it (run a search for "go king king go" in Amazons search engine!).

I'm sure everyone has heard this music, but not this quality. Other versions I've heard (like in movies, commercials, and hockey games) are almost indecipherable. The music overwhelms the singer people in the other ones, this version seems to me to be what the composer had in mind. Of course, the composer is probably dead so I don't know for SURE what he had in mind.

Seriously, this has the best balance of the 2 or 3 versions I've heard. I wasn't until after hearing this disk that I found out that they don't EVER say "go king king go".

Dorati's direction made it just the best recording of this classic