Shamelessly enjoying “Carmina Burana” at the Hollywood Bowl

Classical music, like life in general, abounds in so-called guilty pleasures.  You know, the kind of stuff that you may not admit to friends that you like, but in the privacy of your own iPod earbuds, you relish with abandon.  Warsaw Concerto is one for me.  Carmina Burana is another one.  Not a whole lot of people know Warsaw Concerto, but everyone knows Carmina Burana, whether they actually realize that they know it or not.  It is this relative ubiquity that makes “serious” musical fans scoff Scoff SCOFF when Orff’s cantata shows up on programs.

“Spend your time listening to something deeper, more profound.  Like the Mahler Eighth Symphony,” an uber-intellectual friend once told me.

As it turns out, I like to think of Carmina Burana as the Mahler Eighth’s evil twin:  both split their libretto between Latin and Deutsche, both start with a booming chord in the orchestra followed by a grand entrance by the chorus, and both benefit from being done big.  Of course, where the Mahler Eighth is all radiance and redemption, Carmina Burana is decadence and debauchery.  Mahler has the Virgin Mary, Orff has the drunken “Abbot of Cockaigne.”

There is a time and place for both.

Last Thursday was the time, and the stage beneath the oversized white arches of the Hollywood Bowl was the place for the churning, chugging sounds of Orff’s paen to the whims of fortune and the joys of gluttony, drink, and lust.  The performance benefitted from some standout soloists, smooth and energetic ensemble work by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, all managed by the capable hands of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.

Read more of this post