Issue No. 594
Culture
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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Culture |
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Love in different places
A few reservations washed away by the flood. What else could it be, writes Nabila Erian, but Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana, Carl Orff, cond. Adel Shalaby; Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 29 June, 2002
If it were not for Carmina Burana most of us would not have heard of Carl Orff, except, perhaps, for his educational work for children .And this is rightfully so: Carmina Burana has for long been established as one of the best loved, and certainly one of the most frequently heard, fixtures of the concert repertoire.
It is the first and best of the trilogy that also comprises Catulli Carmina and Triumph of Aphrodite (later known as Trionfo), though Orff did not originally conceive it as an integral cycle. The triptych Trionfo is about love in different places, times and circumstances. Its aim was nothing less than total theatre, including movement, dance, singing, music and other stage crafts and among the models on which Orff drew were classical Greek tragedy and Italian Baroque musical theatre. And the composer was determined to continue in Gluck's footsteps at least in terms of the foregrounding of plot.
Carmina Burana is composed to a sequence of medieval Latin lyrics and Bavarian peasant plays in dialect. These "songs of the Beuren" are included in a 13th century German manuscript housed in a Benedictine abbey south of Munich. This secular poetry of the goliards (vagabond monks) includes themes of love, pagan sensuality, excitement, gambling, gluttony, sex, medieval morality, politics and religion.
Carmina Burana is, to all intents and purposes, a secular cantata, structured around three main sections: In Spring, In The Tavern, and The Court of Love. It opens with a prologue, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi , which it repeats again as the finale.
In the world premiere in the at the Frankfurt Opera on 8 June, 1937 the piece was presented as the ultimate theatrical experience, as indeed has been the case in a vast number of theatres since. Yet the sheer splendour and beauty of the music, as well as the chorus parts, make it equally viable as a concert work. It is as such that it was presented at the Cairo Opera House.
Though it is a mid-20th century work, Carmina Burana remains a compulsive amalgamation of tunefulness, brutal percussive style, primitive, medieval and modern musical language. It is written for a large orchestra and is particularly heavy on the percussion section, requiring five players and including a bass drum, castanets, bells, marimba, and xylophone apart from the usual timpani, cymbals and gong.
The brass section brought out the rhythm most spectacularly with many amazing staccatti performed by the bass-tuba, the horns and the saxophones. Yet the musical style is simple, using traditional block harmony and making no use of polyphony. There is no complicated thematic development, only short motifs endlessly echoed by the orchestra and chorus sections. It is the barbaric, pagan, driving rhythms that account for Carmina Burana's full- blooded, theatrical atmosphere.
Adel Shalaby conducted the work with a straightforward approach involving plenty of impact in the climaxes. The more lyrical sections he navigated with imagination and affection. His tempi were brisk, exhilarating, and managed with the exact sense of rhythm one might expect from someone who spent many years as a percussive virtuoso. Yet occasionally, and particularly early on in the performance, the rhythm did flag a little, and the orchestra and chorus both managed to fluff some of their attacks and phrase endings. Such reservations apart Shalaby, who is currently teaching at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich, produced a commendable performance.
The A Cappella chorus , under the direction of pianist Maya Gvineria from the Cairo Conservatoire, was the star of the evening. They were at their best when the music blazed: in quieter moments their contribution was less immediate, which may well have been a result of not quite understanding the test. Was it, one wonders, translated for them at any point? They were sometimes thin in parts, and the "boys" section was not boyish enough. On the other hand the a cappella section managed a professionalism that I, for one, have never encountered before in Egypt. Tricky crescendos and diminuendos were negotiated with aplomb.
The best of the soloists by far was soprano Taheya Shamseddin. Her voice was ravishing in Amor volat, though her rendition lacked something, perhaps, in terms of sheer gusto. A more marked sense of rhythm might not have gone amiss.
Tenor Hisham El- Guindi, a final year Conservatoire student, has a very promising voice though his appearance in this trying role was somewhat premature. Orff wrote the tenor part in a dizzily high range, wanting the tenor to sound comically strained in the Roast Swan scene from the In the Tavern section, with its florid, lieder-like lines. It is not intended for a contralto or countertenor voice -- which would have required it to have been written an octave lower. Neither should it be sung in a falsetto voice.
The main solo part is unquestionably the baritone role, in which Raouf Zaidan was sadly miscast. The part needs a more robust voice than Zaidan's, and one capable of rather more character.
Yet Carmina Burana's combination of traditional occidental language with a vigorous lyricism, romantic intensity, gigantic structure, and rhythmic audacity once again managed to bowl away all objections. The full-house audience gave a standing ovation.
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