Carmina Burana 2012Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Read more about the opera Carmina Burana
Orff's choral masterpiece is a popular favourite that the RSNO and its massed vocal forces perform on a regular basis. Here the orchestra's Music Director Peter Oundjian is in charge. The longest solo role, for baritone, is taken by Audun Iversen, returning after his War Requiem two years earlier. The soprano is less of a known quantity. The role of the gently roasting swan is usually entrusted to a tenor taken cruelly to the highest extremes of his range. Whether a more comfortable counter-tenor, even such a well-known one, has such an effect can be debated,
The first part of the evening contained two items by British composers. The Dances from Powder Her Face by Thomas Adès are deservedly beginning to worm their way into the orchestral repertoire independently of their source opera. There is also no doubt about the classic status of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams.
