Even in his lifetime Carmina Burana, premiered in 1937, was by far the most popular of Orff's works, and that has remained even more the case since his death in 1982. Even in Germany all his other compositions seem to have vanished.
While musical authorities used to raise doubts about it, mainly due to the timing of its appearance, which inevitably tainted it with the idea of Nazi influence, that now seems to have dissipated. It can be enjoyed by choral societies on its own terms as a hugely exhilarating sing. It also provides a useful opportunity to involve children, in this case the RSNO's Youth Chorus.
The conductor is a new name to us, but the three soloists are familiar and welcome - indeed soprano and tenor sang these parts with the orchestra back in 2019. It is particularly good to have a tenor for the song of the roasting swan. The part is cruelly high, but that is surely the point, and using a counter-tenor, as sometimes happens, is a real cop-out.
What do we hear in conjunction with this brightly coloured masterpiece? That is a difficult decision, but here the RSNO precedes the Orff with a recent work which sounds as though it may be rather fun. The RSNO's principal cellist, Pri-Jee Ng is the soloist in the Scottish Premiere in The Dong with a Luminous Nose, a recent piece by Elena Langer based on a familiar piece of nonsense by Edward Lear.
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