For five decades Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) held a central position in the musical world. That centrality was reflected in a series of top orchestral and operatic posts and in his interpretations, free of self-regarding eccentricities. His modest but highly effective conducting technique also made him the ideal recording artist. Sawallisch was a Bavarian born in Munich, city of orchestras and a great opera company, which he headed for 21 years. He started his career as an outstanding pianist and remained a sought-after accompanist to great Lieder singers and instrumentalists. Volume 1 of a complete conspectus of his Warner Classics recordings (made for Electrola and EMI Classics between 1954 to 1997) includes wonderful Lieder and song collaborations, as well as famous concerto accompaniments for eminent soloists and a heartwarming traversal of Schubert's secular vocal and sacred choral music with Bavarian Radio colleagues. But the main focus among the 65 discs is on his symphonic achievements: Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Dvor�k - the latter's Eighth Symphony was his first published recording, from 1954. Richard Strauss, an early influence, is strongly represented. This 65CD-box brings together all the non-operatic recordings that the German conductor and pianist Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1954 to 1997 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics).

Carl Orff Carmina Burana Orfeon Pamplones Escolania de Nuestra Senora de los Desamparados Orquesta de Valencia Alexander Liebreich Sara Blanch, soprano Joaquin Asiain, tenor Andre Baleiro, baritone They are one of the most famous and frequently performed works of classical music: Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana". The Latin title refers to a collection of songs from Benediktbeuren dating from the 11th and 12th centuries with texts written in Middle Latin, Old French and Middle High German. Orff chose 24 of these songs, their topics ranging widely from the volatility of happiness and prosperity to the fleeting nature of life, from the joy of the return of spring to the pleasures and dangers of drunkenness, gluttony, gambling, and lust. In June 2024, at the Palau de la M�sica in Valencia, the Orquestra de Valencia, one of the great Spanish symphony orchestras, together with the leading local boys' choir as well as one of Spain's oldest choirs, Orfeon Pamplones, performed this epic work under the musical direction of Alexander Liebreich. They were joined by soloists Sara Blanch, Joaquin Asiain, and Andre Baleiro. The live recording of this lively and captivating concert evening is now available. Recorded live at the Palau de la M�sica, Valencia June 2024

To celebrate the birthday of one of Germany's most famous composers (July 10th), Deutsche Grammophon presents Carl Orff - 125th Anniversary Edition. Featuring great performers like Gundula Janowitz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kim Borg, Ernst Haefliger, Symhonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchester & Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin, and many more. The 11-CD Original Jackets Collection contains the complete DG recordings of Carl Orff. 36pg booklet with new liner notes by Andrew Stewart.

Deutsche Grammophon's 120th Anniversary Concert - Filmed and recorded live to the highest industry standards in front of the magnificent scenery of Beijing's Forbidden City, this unique gala concert celebrates the 120th anniversary of Deutsche Grammophon. The concert features conductor Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, both freshly signed as exclusive recording artists to Deutsche Grammophon, and performances from Aida Garifullina, Daniil Trifonov, Mari Samuelsen, and more.

Deutsche Grammophon's 120th Anniversary Concert - Filmed and recorded live to the highest industry standards in front of the magnificent scenery of Beijing's Forbidden City, this unique gala concert celebrates the 120th anniversary of Deutsche Grammophon. The concert features conductor Long Yu and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, both freshly signed as exclusive recording artists to Deutsche Grammophon, and performances from Aida Garifullina, Daniil Trifonov, Mari Samuelsen, and more.

CARMINA BURANA is a 13th century manuscript discovered in the medieval monastery of Benediktbeuren. It means literally "Songs of Beuren," and consists of 250 poems in latin and Middle High German.

Orff: Carmina Burana

Carmina Burana, the staged cantata by Carl Orff, is a work unique in musical history, claims conductor Paavo Jarvi: 'The convergence of medieval texts with such daringly original orchestral colours creates a soundworld that is both archaic and yet beyond time, in which chorus, orchestra and soloists vie in splendour.' The work also has an unusual history: composed shortly after the Nazi takeover of Germany, it was at first rejected because of it's Latin texts and the erotic character of some of it's songs; yet Orff and his work subsequently became highly prized by the Reich. The composer (who was secretly 'a quarter Jewish') did not support the regime, but made the best of his success... Orff was 42 by the time he experienced this breakthrough with his Carmina, which he designated as his Op. 1, disowning all his previous compositions. Departing from the Romantic style, he now wanted to create music linked to rhythm, simple repeated melodies, and non-complex forms. This work's popular success confirmed that decision.

Orff: Carmina Burana

This new release presents Carl Orff’s masterwork opera in a benchmark recording that will set a new standard of sound quality and interpretation. “Die Kluge,” composed in 1943, is written in the style of a fairy tale with the moral of a fable, and tells the story of a king, a peasant, and a clever girl. It is based on Die Kluge Bauerntochter (The Peasant’s Wise Daughter) from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “The recordings were made between 1976 and 1980 and… are remarkable among the conductor’s recordings for the quality of their sound.” (Dietrich Brakemeier, Living Stereo, Munich 1994)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a re-release within the new SWR CLASSIC-series "Century Classics". It contains the rarely performed chamber version of Carmina Burana interpreted by the excellent SWR Vokalensemble, SWR Vokalensemble is the vocal ensemble of the broadcaster S�dwestrundfunk (SWR), based in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1946 as S�dfunk-Chor Stuttgart in 1946 to perform studio work for S�ddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR) which merged in 1998 with the S�dwestfunk to form the SWR. The ensemble was awarded the Echo Klassik in both 2011 and 2012. The ensemble is led by Austrian composer and musician Rupert Huber.

Orff's early lieder initially show the composer's engagement with the musical tradition of his surroundings. In choosing the genre of lieder with piano accompaniment, Orff was choosing a central Romantic genre, in which he could explore and elaborate on his late-Romantic tonal experiences. It is characteristic of Orff's artistic path that he began by setting texts to music. From the beginning the rhetoric of the language determines the means of the composition, the tendency toward narrative betrays the theatrical composer of later years, and in the piano setting traditional and time-tested piano accompaniments are frequently interrupted by gestures inspired by improvisation or abandoned in favor of orchestral effects.

Orff: Carmina Burana

Classical Music

Classical Music

Let us separate the crime from the execution. The Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble has to be rated among the very top wind bands in the US, right up there with the estimable Eastman Wind Ensemble.

I believe it was a Fanfare contributor who once wrote that if he ever had to listen to Orff’s Carmina burana again he would throw up. While the piece is not exactly an emetic for me, it’s not one I find to have many redeeming features. This arrangement for concert band by John Krance strikes me as the equivalent of a divide by zero error. It’s too bad that much brilliant playing has been spent on it, (therein lies the crime) when there are so many wonderful pieces, both original and arranged, for concert band.

Bird’s Serenade is one of them. Arthur A. Bird (1856–1923)—you will not learn from the enclosed booklet note—was born in Belmont, Massachusetts. In 1875, he was sent to Germany to study at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik; and except for brief visits home, he remained abroad for the rest of his life. He became a chess partner and close friend of Liszt, and wrote over 100 works. He was considered a “composer of promise” up until his marriage in 1888 to a wealthy widow, after which he apparently preferred to live the lazy life of the idle rich. Bird’s Serenade, here edited by Gunther Schuller, is a beautiful piece in late Romantic style that won the Paderewski Prize for best chamber work by an American composer in 1901. It was first performed in Boston by Georges Longy and his Woodwind Club in 1902. If you are familiar with and like the wind works of Richard Strauss, you will find much to enjoy here.

Herbert Owen Reed (b. 1910) in Odessa, Missouri, has quite an impressive calling card. Earning his baccalaureate and graduate degrees in music composition from Louisiana State University, he went on to the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Howard Hanson, among others, earning his Ph.D. in 1939. At Tanglewood, he met and furthered his studies with Martin?, Copland, and Bernstein. Then, in Colorado Springs, he continued to study under Roy Harris, and eventually he took lessons from Schoenberg. That’s quite a diverse background, a lot of which, except for the Schoenberg, is reflected in his La fiesta mexicana, Reed’s best-known work. Reed has made a serious study of the Native American musics of Taos, New Mexico, and his scores derive much of their material, not just from Native North American cultures, but from Mexican and Aztec sources as well. La fiesta is a major composition that embraces a number of musical styles and evokes an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors and moods. Particularly moving is the movement titled Mass. It is the centerpiece of this Mexican folk song symphony that depicts a religious festival dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Bird and Reed items are more than worth the price of this budget Naxos disc. And you are not likely to hear these pieces better played. Recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Classical Music

ORFF Ein Sommernachtstraum • Christian von Gehren, cond; actors; Andechs Fest Ch; Munich Youth O; Munich Radio O Andechs ORFF Academy • CPO 777 657 (146:09) Live: Andechs 7/28–30/2010


Carl Orff’s incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream grew out of the desire of the National Socialists—generally, but here specifically Frankfurt’s anti-Semitic Lord Mayor Friedrich Krebs—to produce an appropriately Aryan accompaniment to the play as replacement for the now inconveniently “Jewish” musical additions of Felix Mendelssohn. Orff, even as his scenic cantata Carmina burana was gaining popular acclaim in the new Germany, was concerned with his politically dubious reputation as a modernist and consorter with leftists during the Weimar years. So he took the commission despite warnings from his pragmatic publisher that he would never be able to “dispatch Mendelssohn.” In fairness, his interest in the Elizabethan comedy was real; he had been working on such incidental music since 1917. No doubt he also found the sizable advance attractive. But what had been politically expedient in 1938—he prospered during the Third Reich—was to haunt him after the war, however facile his explanations, and at the least diminishes any pleasure one might have in hearing what he has to offer.


Or maybe not. The audience certainly seems to enjoy this production from the 2010 Orff in Andechs Festival. It will be rougher going for anyone lacking fluent German. Though the story is well known, and the alert listener will be able to figure out what is happening some of the time, there is no text, translation, or synopsis, a serious failing shared with cpo’s other recording from this festival, the Orff/Monteverdi Orpheus . My admiration goes out to anyone who, textless, can happily attend for more than two hours and 20 minutes to heavily edited Shakespeare in German, with attractively dreamlike but inconsequential and repetitive music cues that cannot even be appreciated in context of the words they are to amplify.


Cynicism aside, one is left wondering what Orff did to earn his substantial commission. Many of the handful of independent pieces are adaptations of other compositions: The prelude is from Carmina burana (“Si puer cum puellula”) transformed into a fanfare, used again in full as a replacement for the wedding march. The Rustics are introduced (in this version of 1964) with music from the 1943 fairy tale opera Die Kluge, which, in this context, jars with its banality. Annotator Thomas Rösch suggests other sources: Carmina burana again (“Chramer, gip die varwe mir”) for Titania’s lullaby, and an allusion to the act II duet for Octavian and Sophie from Der Rosenkavalier for the moonrise scene. I suppose one could make a game out of identifying the remaining borrowed themes, but I’ll leave that to others.


There are magical moments; the playing of the trumpet to the moon has the same charm as the ending of Der Mond , the prelude to the ninth scene in Theseus’ palace recalls moments of repose in the famous cantata, and the wonderful midnight melodrama (though I would have wanted Puck’s speeches done less malevolently) and finale (name that source!) provide a fitting end. Would that it all had been so engaging. The youth orchestras, and the chorus in its brief outings, are able; the recording clear for those for whom German is not an obstacle. The birds chirping in the forest are a nice touch. In any case, though my curiosity has been only partly satisfied, at least now, thanks to cpo, the historical footnote is made tangible. You might want to check the samples online before buying. And find a translation.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

What Carl Orff created with the Prometheus score is neither an opera in the traditional sense nor an oratorio, but also not a play with music or even “authentic” classical tragedy: far more is it an extremely individual musical interpretation of Aeschylus’s tragedy that concentrates primarily on the symbolic imagery of the scenes, which – as Orff himself said – “is accentuated and visualized by the music” and the spectator and hearer thereby enlightened.

The work is sung in Ancient Greek; the booklet contains a plot synopsis in English and German languages, plus liner notes.

REVIEW:

This CD of Carl Orff's Prometheus, released on the Orfeo label, is based on live recordings by Bayerischer Rundfunk from October 1st and 2nd, 1975 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. Two concert performances were recorded, which took place in honor of Orff's 80th birthday. Of all the events held in Munich to mark the composer's milestone birthday, these two were considered the greatest. But that's no wonder, because the work, which was successfully premiered on March 24, 1968 at the Stuttgart State Opera, is a real masterpiece. Here we are dealing with a real rarity.

The very informative booklet shows that Orff did not in any way claim that this was an educational theater for the initiated, but only drew the consequences from the mythical power of language of Aeschylus. Orff's decision was good. The ancient Greek language gives the whole, both sung and declaimed passages, an extremely strong, haunting expression that is typical of this type of musical theatre. Ultimately, Orff was concerned with capturing the spirit of ancient theater by evoking it again with thoroughly modern means, with the aim of interpreting it anew and for our time (booklet). Orff has completely succeeded in this. His intention has worked in every respect. The impact of Prometheus is even greater than that of his predecessors, Antigone and Oedipus, previously written by Orff. Particularly impressive are the fully sung prophecies of the eponymous hero chained to the rock as well as the choruses, which are only entrusted to women. These breathe enormous intensity and lead the listener away from a normal opera to a new form of music theater for which Orff was the godfather.

Although the orchestra with the brilliant percussion, which is only joined by wind instruments and double basses, is not very pronounced, its outbursts are nevertheless powerful...Rafael Kubelik succeeds in exploring the diverse and quite unusual musical structures. Under his proven leadership, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra has surpassed itself. The conductor relies on a distinctive, rhythmically concise and often almost violent sound that corresponds excellently to the content of the work.

The singers put themselves entirely at the service of this great piece. The first to be mentioned here is Roland Hermann, who impressively proves that even a modern game like Prometheus can be mastered with a fantastic Italian technique. His beautiful baritone manages the balancing act between expressive singing and pathetic declamation magnificently. In her own way, Colette Lorand comes up with a very complex portrayal of the role of Io Inachis.

Conclusion: An interesting recording of an unusual work, the acquisition of which is definitely to be recommended.

-- Das Opernfreund

With Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana; one of the most popular pieces in music history and the most performed choral/orchestral work of the 20th century; Teatro La Fenice returns to the Piazza San Marco in Venice; in front of the magnificent façade of the Basilica di San Marco. Conducted by the great master Fabio Luisi; featuring the word-class singers Regula Mühlemann; Michael Schade and Markus Werba it was a magnificent event. "La Fenice’s orchestra and choir; in this case with the addition of the Piccoli cantori veneziani in the final part; have hit the mark“ (Il Gazzettino) with this concert and "it is noticeable overall the work made by the conductor Fabio Luisi; who managed to maintain the tension of the various historical pages with determination and energy." (Il Gazzettino)

Volume 5 of Profil's Günter Wand Edition is devoted to Carl Orff's massive and enormously popular cantata, Carmina Burana, in a stirring radio performance presented with the NDR Sinfonieorchester in 1984. (Profil)