‘Everyone knows the first part, ‘O Fortuna’. Even if you think you don’t know it, you’ve heard it. It is widely used in films and commercials. I’ve conducted it 150 times and I still don’t get bored of it. A performance is actually just like a human life: you never know in advance which way it will go. At the beginning it is quiet on stage. Then follows the first timpani stroke. Then as a conductor you can determine the direction: I can make it sound sparkling today, demonic tomorrow, religious the day after.”
Conductor Raymond Janssen has performed the Carmina Burana conducted. For the fifteenth year he is touring the Netherlands with the International Symphony Orchestra from Lviv, Ukraine and the national choir of Ukraine ‘Dumka’. Normally every other year, but the concerts are so popular that they have been playing them consecutively for the last three years.
“It is a very special piece, which has everything from spectacle to lyrical passages. Lust, love, addiction, gambling, banal pieces: everything that comes along in a human life is included. It starts with that opening: Oh Fortune, the goddess of fate who spins the wheel of fortune. In the course of Carmina Burana the wheel turns. The composer, Carl Orff, used it there medieval manuscript Carmina Burana written in Latin by Bavarian monks who had become destitute.
Beer mugs on the table
“The pieces by the three solo singers nicely illustrate how Orff always keeps the music interesting. For example, when the tenor sings about being hung on a spit and roasted like a swan in ‘Olim Lacus Colueram‘ (Once I worshiped a lake’), the music suddenly becomes jazzy.
“After the opening, love songs ‘In the spring’ are heard. Then the wheel of fortune turns to ‘De Taveerne’. “In the rhythm, sung only by a male choir, you hear the pub guests hitting the table with beer mugs. In between they talk about life for a while and then the rhythm of the songs starts again. A solo that is always successful with the audience is ‘Ego Sum Abbas‘ (‘I am the abbot’): it is about a drunken priest who gives a monologue about himself. But that scene is continued by soprano solos in ‘The Court of Love’; an amorous part with strikingly high notes. That is a reaction to the drink and that banal tavern.
“At the end the ‘O Fortuna’ sounds again. The cycle of experiencing, living, hoping, luck and bad luck: everything repeats itself. There is no beginning and no end.”
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