In Performance: NSO and "Carmina"

Web-only review:

NSO's Thunderous (No, Really) "Carmina Burana"
By Joe Banno

The rain had started long before the downbeat of Thursday’s National Symphony Orchestra concert at Wolf Trap. But the torrential downpour and fusillade of thunder held back until the opening bars of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” and then proceeded to accompany (more often, compete with) the remainder of the performance.

One would have been forgiven for imagining that this endlessly popular score — which sounds like an adrenalized hybrid of circus music and satanic Mass — held some incantatory power to conjure the chaos and violence of the Third Reich (for whose audiences it was written in 1937) in the skies around the Filene Center. But the weather seemed only to egg on the musicians and tweak the audience in positive ways. Every time the Washington Chorus one-upped the storm with a mighty fortissimo, or baritone Hugh Russell (acting his solos with operatic fervor, and singing with lovely, splendidly secure tone) finished a movement with a bravura flourish, the crowd burst into spontaneous cheering. Conductor Emil de Cou smilingly welcomed the feedback.
(read more after the jump)

De Cou — who before intermission had led a languorous reading of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” and suitably indulgent performances of Leopold Stokowski’s über-schmaltzy, Hollywood-ized arrangements of scores by Bach and Mussorgsky — gave Orff’s music the boldly extroverted treatment it calls for. But the more diaphanous moments registered, too, aided by soprano Joanna Mongiardo and tenor Robert Baker, both of whom sang with charm and plaintive beauty. But, as sometimes happens at Wolf Trap, nature took the final bow.

— Joe Banno

By Anne Midgette  |  July 24, 2009; 8:02 PM ET  | Category:  local reviews
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