Dance Review: Nasville Ballet's "Carmina Burana" is even better the second time around

Photo: Marianne Leach

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Although usually presented as a concert piece, Carl Orff's 1936 "Carmina Burana" was always intended to be theatrical, with some mimed action and "magic tableaux." The first performance in Frankfurt in 1937 was fully staged, in fact, with dancers, sets, and costumes.

Photo: Heather Thorne

Nashville Ballet's "Carmina Burana," originally presented at the Touhill back in 2013, made an encore appearance there this past weekend, once again under the aegis of Dance St. Louis. With 40 dancers, 120 singers, and 60 musicians, including The University of Missouri-St. Louis Orchestra and Singers, The Bach Society of Saint Louis, and The St. Louis Children's Choirs, it was, once again, a stunning work of dance theatre that succeeded both as Spectacle and as Art.

The first (and least sexually explicit) of Orff's "Trionfi" trilogy of choral theatre works, "Carmina Burana" derives its title from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their "vulgar" status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling, and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" ("Fortune, Empress of the World"), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe has a tendency to dope-slap the excessively smug.

Photo: Heather Thorne

Nashville Ballet Artistic Director and choreographer Paul Vasterling and visual designer Eric Harris emphasize that centrality of Lady Fortuna by making her a key character in the ballet. Fortuna begins and ends the evening surrounded by a massive, stage-filling "wheel of fortune" skirt that neatly establishes her dominance, but she also interacts with individual dancers to emphasize fate's capricious influence. Kayla Rowser was Fortuna in this revival, and she alternated beautifully between the faux-mechanical precision of the impersonal wheel and the seduction of Lady Luck.

This realization of "Carmina Burana" was, in fact, filled with striking images that beautifully complement the lyrics. Let me cite a few that will, I hope, give you a feel for the remarkable quality of what Mr. Vasterling, Mr. Harris, and the dancers accomplished.

Photo: Heather Thorne

For "In Taberna quando sumus" (labeled "The Drinking Song" here) the stage was filled with dancers in wine-red outfits reeling about in drunken but very precise abandon while the lyrics reeled off a list of the many types who come to the tavern to imbibe. The bird being roasted for dinner in "Olim lacus coleuram" (The Roasted Swan") was costumed all in white and danced entirely en pointe, as though trying to escape the flames. She was eventually surrounded in fiery red-on-white banners and carried off the stage by dancers in red. Katie Vasilopoulos danced the role this time with a sense of heart-rending distress.

The "Spring" section underscored the lyrical parallels between the awakening of the earth and the awakening of human desire with a succession of colorful and flirtatious dances. In "Floret silva nobilis" ("The Maypole"), for example, the dancers were costumed in spring-like pastels and, at one point, danced around a human Maypole. "Chramer, gib de varwe mir" ("More Joys of Spring") made the sex/spring parallel even more obvious with poses of adolescent sexual braggadocio and cheerful coupling.

Photo: Heather Thorne

I could go on, but you get the idea. The Nashville Ballet's "Carmina Burana" was a visual treat of the highest order.

Musically, "Carmina Burana" was noticeably more polished this time around than it was in 2013. Perhaps the best work came from the combined voices of the Bach Society and UMSL University Singers. Deployed on risers behind and to the sides of the dancers, they were powerful, to say the least. Elocution was quite impressive, given how widely separated the singers were, although I suspect audience members who were not familiar with the music might have benefited from projected text.

Soprano Stella Markou and tenor Tim Waurick repeated their roles from 2013. Ms. Markou had a bit of difficulty with that absurdly difficult coloratura moment in "Dulcissime" ("Sweetest One" in the program) but sounded great otherwise. And Mr. Waurick's roasting swan was, once again, one of the most dramatic I've heard. Baritone Adam Stefo turned in compelling performances of some very difficult music ("Dies, nox et omnia," with its rapid switch between falsetto and chest voice, is a real killer). His solo in "Ego sum abbas" ("The Bad Abbott") was a wonderful combination of skillful musicianship and theatricality, complete with drunken hiccups.

The St. Louis Children's Choir, deployed in box seats house right and left, were also most impressive, holding their own even through the tricky tempo changes towards the end of "Tempus est iocundum."

Photo: Heather Thorne

The UMSL University Orchestra, conducted by James Richards, sounded more robust and cohesive than they did back in 2013, a few minor brass intonation problems not withstanding. Orff's big brass and percussion sections had the proper impact, and more intimate moments like the "Round Dance" had just the right delicacy. Congratulations to them and Mr. Richards for a job well done.

The evening opened with "La Fontana," a new work choreographed by Dance St. Louis Artistic and Executive Director Michael Utoff to Bach's "Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor," BWV 1060, and performed by Saint Louis Ballet. As a choreographer, Mr. Utoff seems to have a remarkable affinity for Bach and an excellent eye for movement that creates visual analogs to the composer's musical structures. Four women costumed as classical Greek statues (ivory togas and coronets) suggested the fountain of the title, an image enhanced by their fluid movement. They were soon joined by three more colorfully costumed couples: the men in red-orange classical outfits and the women in flowing pastel gowns and long gloves. As the work progressed, the two groups began to interact, until, at the end, the couples became the fountain and the four women struck statuesque poses on the outside.

The movement enhanced and complemented Bach's music, in short, without trying to impose a story thread on it. It was a nice contrasting choice to the more literally narrative choreography of "Carmina Burana," just as Bach's chamber music was a well-chosen contrast to Orff's far more massive work.

Oboist Ann Homan and violinist Julia Sakharova were flawless in the solo roles, intertwining beautifully in Bach's elaborate counterpoint.

Dance St. Louis's Bach/Orff double bill will be over by the time you read this, of course, but I still want to congratulate them on bringing this crowd pleaser back for another appearance. Fully staged productions of "Carmina Burana" are rare, so the chance to see one of this quality was most welcome. The Dance St. Louis season continues with MOMIX in "Alchemia" at the Touhill January 29 and

Rites of spring

Carlos Izcaray

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and Children's Chorus conducted by Carlos Izcaray
What: Music of Steve Reich and Carl Orff
When: May 1–4, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

[Find out more about the music with the symphony program notes and my symphony preview post.]

The St. Louis Symphony has a long history with Carl Orff's 1936 “scenic cantata" "Carmina Burana," from its first performance back in 1961 with Edouard Van Remoortel on the podium to David Robertson's nicely balanced performance back in May of 2011. There's even a fine 1994 recording with Leonard Slatkin and an all-star lineup of soloists that is apparently still available both in disc form and as an MP3 download from amazon.com.

The "Carmina Burana" we're getting this week from the young Venezuelan conductor Carlos Izcaray—which his web site describes as his "US symphonic debut"—ranks right up there with that of Slatkin and (my favorite) David Amado back in 2003. Like Amado, Mr. Izcaray takes a highly theatrical approach to this material without in any way compromising the music.

Nmon Ford

That's thoroughly in keeping with the composer's intentions. Based on an 1847 collection of secular poetry celebrating food, drink, gambling, and (especially) sex by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany, "Carmina Burana" was envisioned by Orff as the basis for a choral cantata with some mimed action and “magic tableaux." And, in fact, the first performance in Frankfurt in 1937 was fully staged, with dancers, sets, and costumes. It's usually presented strictly as a concert piece these days (although the Nashville Ballet gave us an impressive staging of it here this past February), but the composer's theatrical intentions are evident both in the music and in his writing about it.

The three soloists this week all have solid opera credentials. So, as you might expect, their performances were acted as well as they were sung—and they were sung quite well indeed.

Orff gave some of the strongest solos to the baritone, and Panamanian-American singer Nmon Ford made the most of them. His "Omnia Sol temperat" was filled with sultry longing. He radiated a fierce, frustrated rage as the despairing sensualist in "Estuans interius" ("Boiling inside with violent anger, in bitterness I tell myself: I am made of dust") and his Abbot of “Cucaniensis" (which I've seen translated as Cuckoominster or Cockaigne, among other things) had an element of inebriated comedy that I hadn't seen before but which played quite well.

Juliet Petrus

Soprano Juliet Petrus captured all the barely suppressed eroticism of "Amor volat undique" ("Love flies everywhere") and "Stetit puella." "There was a girl in a red tunic," runs the translation. "If anything touched that tunic, it rustled. Ah!" That final "ah" is sung to a long, melismatic line suggesting an ecstatic release, and that's exactly the way Ms. Petrus delivered it. She also managed that absurdly difficult upward glissando in "Dulcissime" with ease.

The staging of "Dulcissime" was a nice touch as well. As Ms. Petrus sang "Dulcissime, totam tibi subdo me!" ("My sweetest, I give all of myself to you!") she and Mr. Ford turned towards each other. They joined hands and stayed in character all the way through the following "Blanziflor et Helena" chorus, with its glorification of the titular lovers. It was a simple but very effective bit of theatre.

Ryan Belongie

The tenor soloist has only one number ("Olim lacus colueram"), but it's a corker—a macabre little piece about a roasted swan seen from the bird's point of view. The melodic line lies at the top of the tenor range, often forcing the singer up into his falsetto. This time around the role went to countertenor Ryan Belongie (the first time I've seen it cast that way) who was, as a result, able to sing it in his natural voice. He threw himself completely into the role, even going so far as to wear a black and white suit and dying his brown hair silver. Vocally and physically he was that swan. The impact was chilling and even heartbreaking. It was best interpretation of that piece I've seen, bar none.

If you know "Carmina Burana," of course, you know that the soloists are a relatively small part of it. The bulk of the music is carried by the chorus, which has to sing in Latin, Middle High German and Old Provençal. The Symphony Chorus and Children's Chorus (who appear only in the "Court of Love" section, singing lyrics which would make conservative moralists blanch if they knew about them) were all in fine voice when we heard them Thursday night, with clean attacks and crisp enunciation.

The vocal/orchestral balance can be a problem with this music—the instrumental ensemble is large, with a big percussion battery—but it sounded fine to us up in row D of the dress circle. The soloists were less audible up there, but I have come to realize that this is more of a Powell Hall acoustics issue than anything else.

A few intonation issues in the brasses not withstanding, the orchestra sounded wonderful. The opening and closing "O Fortuna" had all the power it required, and both Mr. Izcaray's disposition of his forces and his interpretation of the score brought out some instrumental highlights that I hadn't heard quite as clearly in previous performances of this music. The flutes and piccolo in "Veris leta facies," for example, really stood out, as did the little duet with flautist Mark Sparks and timpanist Shannon Wood in the dance the opens the "Uf dem Anger" ("On the green"). Some of his tempi were surprisingly fast—most notably in the big drinking song "In taberna quando sumus"—but not so much so that they posed a problem for the orchestra or chorus.

The concert opened with Steve Reich's "The Four Sections," a 1987 work in four movements, each of which highlights a different section of the orchestra—strings, winds, brass, and percussion. Reich and the other minimalists owe, I think, an obvious debt to the stripped-down melodic and harmonic language of "Carmina Burana" and many of Orff's other works, so pairing Reich's music with Orff's make sense from that perspective. Unfortunately it also makes it obvious just how limited Reich's palette is by comparison.

With a restricted range of dynamics and tempi and an obsessive use of repetition, Reich's music sounds more like something composed for a machine than for an orchestra of human beings. Minimalism is certainly capable of producing music of great emotional power and resonance as (say) John Adams and Philip Glass have often demonstrated. "The Four Sections," though, felt like little more than a dry academic exercise to me. The contrast with the full-blooded "Carmina Burana" could not have been more stark.

The concert will be repeated Friday Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, May 2–4, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. The Saturday performance will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM, HD 1, and via live Internet stream.

Next at Powell: David Robertson closes out the season with Britten's "Les Illuminations," along with Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 5" and the St. Louis premiere of Marc-André Dalbavie's "La Source d'un regard" Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, May 9-11. The soloist is tenor Nicholas Phan. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

If music be the food of love...

Nashville Ballet's Carmina Burana

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The St. Louis Symphony brings its season to a close this weekend and next with a pair of concerts featuring big, audience-pleasing works.

This week it's a piece for chorus and orchestra that has been performed often by the symphony (most recently in 2011 with David Robertson on the podium) and is a perennial favorite with audiences world wide: Carl Orff's 1936 “scenic cantata” "Carmina Burana."

The celebrity of "Carmina Burana" is, in part, an illustration of the power of the sliver screen. Once described by British critic Richard Osborne as “the best known new composition to emerge from Nazi Germany”, "Carmina Burana" was something of a cult item in this country until John Boorman's 1981 epic "Excalibur" appropriated bits of it for the soundtrack. The resulting upswing in popularity was not unlike that experienced by Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (or the first two minutes of it, anyway) after the release of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

It's a pity that the other two parts of the trilogy of which "Carmina Burana" is only the first entry—the occasionally pornographic "Catulli Carmina" of 1942, based on poems by Catullus, and "Il Trionfo di Afrodite" from 1951—haven't seen an analogous rise in their fame. I'd love to see the Symphony Chorus take a shot at the intense drama of "Catulli Carmina" in particular, even if translation of some of the lyrics would pose a problem for the symphony's more conservative patrons.

Still, a movie can only pique public interest. "Carmina Burana" has sustained it because its rhythmic drive, its colorful orchestration and the immediate emotional appeal of the secular medieval poems that serve as the text are well nigh irresistible.

Carl Orff by Jens Rusch

Orff envisioned this material as the basis for a choral cantata with some mimed action and “magic tableaux.” And, in fact, the first performance in Frankfurt in 1937 was fully staged, with dancers, sets, and costumes. It's usually presented strictly as a concert piece these days (although the Nashville Ballet gave us an impressive staging of it here last February), but the composer's theatrical intentions are evident in every note.

“Carmina Burana” derives its title from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their “vulgar” status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling, and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” (“Fortune, Empress of the World”), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe has a tendency to dope-slap the excessively smug.

A number of guest conductors have had their way with Carmina Burana here over the years. This time around it's Spanish-Venezuelan conductor Carlos Izcaray, making what his web site describes as his "US symphonic debut." It's not his St. Louis debut, though; he was last seen here directing the Opera Theatre orchestra in a dramatically flawed but musically impeccable "Carmen" back in 2012. Mr. Izcaray's resume includes extensive operatic engagements, so I'd expect him to make the most of this work's overtly theatrical elements.

Although "Carmina Burana" is mostly about the chorus, there are some great moments for the soloists. Highlights include "Olim lacus colueram"—a macabre little piece about a roasted swan seen from the bird's point of view—which pushes the tenor soloist up to the very top of his tessitura; “Dulcissime,” which opens with an absurdly difficult upward glissando for the soprano; and “Estuans interius,” a dramatic baritone aria that boils over with the rage and frustration of the disappointed sensualist.

The singers this week—all making their SLSO debuts—are soprano Juliet Petrus, baritone Nmon Ford, and Ryan Belongie. Mr. Belongie is a countertenor (a man who sings in the mezzo or alto range), so he'll probably be pretty comfortable with the swan role.

If you're curious as to what the "Carmina Burana" poems might have sounded like when they were written, there are a number of collections out there by early music groups that are worth checking out. The Boston Camerata and the René Clemencic Consort both have fine recordings out there and the Ensemble Unicorn has a disc that looks interesting enough to entice me to buy it.

Steve Reich in 2006

Opening the program will be "The Four Sections," a 1987 work by American composer Steve Reich. Reich was one of the first of the minimalists, a group of composers who (to quote Paul Schiavo's program notes) "abandoned the abstruse harmonies and tangled rhythms that had become the hallmark of late-modern music and pared their compositions down to a few essential elements: neutral, static harmonies; brief repeating melodic figures; and clear rhythmic patterns within a steady pulse." Other notable members of that school include Philip Glass, John Adams, and Terry Riley (whose 1964 "In C" is widely regarded as one of the first minimalist pieces).

"Reich explains that the work's title has multiple connotations," Mr. Schiavo continues. "It refers to the four families of orchestral instruments (strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion). It also references the four movements that comprise the piece. Finally, the title alludes to four harmonic sections within each movement."

In his Composer's Notes at the web site of his publishers, Boosey and Hawkes, Mr. Reich notes that since "each of the movements focuses on one or two of the orchestral sections, one might be tempted to think of it as a concerto for orchestra. However, the focus here is on the interlocking of voices within the sections rather than displaying their virtuosity against the rest of the orchestra. Those familiar with other pieces of mine will recognise this interlocking of similar instruments to produce a contrapuntal web filled with resulting melodic patterns."

"The Four Sections" calls for a fairly sizeable orchestra—nearly 100 players, including two pianos and two synthesizers (SLSO regular Peter Henderson and Nina Ferrigno with two keyboards each) and looks like challenging stuff. I look forward to seeing what our ensemble of virtuosi does with it.

The essentials: Carlos Izcaray conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Orff's "Carmina Burana" and Steve Reich's "The Four Sections" Thursday through Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, May 1-4, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Luck be a Lady

Photo by Heather Thorne

Who: The Nashville Ballet
What: Carmina Burana
Where: Dance St. Louis at the Touhill Center
When: February 21-24, 2013

So: Take the 40 dancers of the Nashville Ballet; add 120 singers and 60 musicians, including The University of Missouri-St. Louis Orchestra and Singers, The Bach Society of Saint Louis, and The St. Louis Children’s Choir; then set them loose on Carl Orff's 1936 Carmina Burana on the Touhill Center's big stage. What you get is an impressive piece of dance theatre that succeeds both as Spectacle and as Art.

That couldn’t be more appropriate, since Orff envisioned this material as the basis for a choral cantata with some mimed action and “magic tableaux.” And, in fact, the first performance in Frankfurt in 1937 was fully staged, with dancers, sets, and costumes. It’s usually presented strictly as a concert piece these days, but the composer’s theatrical intentions are evident in every note.

The first (and least sexually explicit) of Orff’s Trionfi trilogy of choral theatre works, Carmina Burana derives its title from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their “vulgar” status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling, and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” (“Fortune, Empress of the World”), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe has a tendency to dope-slap the excessively smug.

Nashville Ballet Artistic Director and choreographer Paul Vasterling and visual designer Eric Harris emphasize that centrality of Lady Fortuna by making her a key character in the ballet. Danced with steely precision by Sadie Bo Harris, Fortuna begins and ends the evening surrounded by a massive, stage-filling “wheel of fortune” skirt that neatly establishes her dominance, but she also interacts with individual dancers to emphasize fate’s capricious influence.

This realization of Carmina Burana was, in fact, filled with striking images that beautifully complement the lyrics. Let me cite a few that will, I hope, give you a feel for the remarkable quality of what Mr. Vasterling, Mr. Harris, and the dancers accomplished.

Photo by Heather Thorne

For “In Taberna quando sumus” (labeled “The Drinking Song” here) the stage was filled with dancers in wine-red outfits reeling about in drunken but very precise abandon while the lyrics reeled off a list of the many types who come to the tavern to imbibe. The bird being roasted for dinner in “Olim lacus coleuram” (The Roasted Swan”) was costumed all in white and danced entirely en pointe, as though trying to escape the flames. She was eventually surrounded in fiery red-on-white banners and carried off the stage by dancers in red. Alexandra Meister danced the role with tragic grace the night we attended.

The “Spring” section underscored the lyrical parallels between the awakening of the earth and the awakening of human desire with a succession of colorful and flirtatious dances. In “Floret silva nobilis” (“The Maypole”), for example, the dancers were costumed in spring-like pastels and, at one point, danced around a human Maypole. “Chramer, gib de varwe mir” (“More Joys of Spring”) made the sex/spring parallel even more obvious with poses of adolescent sexual braggadocio and cheerful coupling.

I could go on, but you get the idea. The Nashville Ballet’s Carmina Burana was a visual treat of the highest order.

Musically, things were a bit more uneven. Perhaps the best work came from the combined voices of the Bach Society and UMSL singers. Deployed on risers behind and to the sides of the dancers, they were powerful, to say the least. Soprano Stella Markou and tenor Tim Waurick sounded great (Mr. Waurick’s roasting swan was one of the most dramatic I’ve heard). Baritone Jeffrey Heyl turned in a respectable performance of some very difficult music (“Dies, nox et omnia,” with its rapid switch between falsetto and chest voice, is a real killer), although he was not always as passionately engaged as I would have liked. The St. Louis Children’s Choir, deployed in box seats house right and left, were also most impressive, although they did tend to get a bit out of synch with the orchestra in the tempo changes towards the end of “Tempus est iocundum.”

The UMSL Orchestra, conducted by James Richards, had some of the usual weaknesses I associate with student ensembles, especially in the strings, but for a big wind-and-percussion piece like Carmina Burana that doesn’t matter so much. They certainly did a good job overall and can feel justifiably proud of the results.

The evening opened with Bach’s Cantata No. 10 ("Meine Seele erhebet den Herren"), danced by MADCO and choreographed by Dance St. Louis Artistic and Executive Director Michael Utoff. As a curtain raiser and contrast to the more spectacular and overtly theatrical main event, it was an excellent choice. Mr. Utoff’s often whimsical choreography was a nice match for what the program notes describe as MADCO’s “versatile and athletic style”, complimenting the religious text without overtly illustrating it. The final “Chorale,” in which the dancers create the momentary illusion of a cathedral-like space, was particularly lovely—as were Felia Davenport’s simple, dark blue costumes.

Dance St. Louis’s Bach/Orff double bill will be over by the time you read this, of course, but I still want to congratulate them on bringing such a big, ambitious project to town. Fully staged productions of Carmina Burana are rare (we haven’t had one locally in a couple of decades, at least), so the chance to see one of this quality was most welcome. The Dance St. Louis season continues with New York City Ballet MOVES March 8 and 9 at the Fox. For more information: dancestlouis.org

TPTBT (The Place to Be Tonight): Friday, February 22

Alexandra Meister
photo by Heather Thorne

Dance St. Louis presents the Nashville Ballet production of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana tonight and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 2 PM. The production features 120 singers, 60 musicians, and 40 dancers, including The University of Missouri-St. Louis Orchestra and Singers, The Bach Society of Saint Louis and The St. Louis Children’s Choir.  Orff described the work as a "scenic cantata," so even though it's usually performed strictly as a concert piece, adding dance is very much in keeping with the composer's intentions. The opening act for the evening is Bach’s Cantata No. 10, performed by MADCO and The University of Missouri-St. Louis Orchestra and Singers. Performances take place at the Touhill Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. For more information: dancestlouis.org.

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Rites of Spring

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and Children’s Chorus
What: Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 3 and Orff’s Carmina Burana
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: May 5 through 8, 2011

If you harbor any lingering doubts as to the St. Louis Symphony’s status as a top-drawer orchestra, you should hie yourself to Powell Hall this weekend. The sheer virtuosity on display in every minute of the world premiere performance of Christopher Rouse’s manic Symphony No. 3 – accurately described as a “wild ride” in David Robertson’s brief introduction – will surely win you over, even if the piece itself does not. The Carmina Burana that followed it was pretty hot stuff as well.

Inspired by (and strongly resembling, right down to some of the orchestration) Prokofiev’s machine-age Symphony No. 2 (which was itself inspired by Beethoven’s final piano sonata), Rouse’s Third is a fiercely challenging work that demands remarkable stamina and skill from every member of the orchestra. In that last respect it reminded me as much of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra as it did of the Prokofiev work. An aggressive mix of wild cacophony and surprising lyricism, the piece was clearly not received with enthusiasm by everyone, but my wife and I both found it bracing. Tempi in places were insanely fast, reminiscent of some of Frank Zappa’s more cheerfully deranged efforts. I was impressed that everyone could simply keep together, much less play with such precision.

Mr. Robertson said that he hoped the audience would enjoy hearing the symphony as much as the orchestra enjoyed playing it. Many of us clearly did, judging by the standing ovation that the performance received.

It was back to the familiar after intermission with what British critic Richard Osborne once described as “the best known new composition to emerge from Nazi Germany”, Carl Orff’s 1936 Carmina Burana. The first (and least sexually explicit) of Orff’s Trionfi trilogy of choral theatre works, the composition derives its title from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their “vulgar” status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling, and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” (“Fortune, Empress of the World”), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe has a tendency to dope-slap the excessively smug.

Orff envisioned this material as the basis for a choral cantata with some mimed action and “magic tableaux”, and while it’s usually performed strictly as a concert piece these days (we haven’t had a staged performance here in over a decade), the composer’s theatrical intentions are evident in every note. Mr. Robertson’s reading honored those intentions without ever sacrificing musical beauty, and included a few wonderfully dramatic touches. It lacked the marked contrasts of both tempo and dynamics that characterized Peter Oundjian’s fine performance in 2008 or David Amado’s somewhat controversial one in 2003, but I found myself smitten nevertheless. One hopes New Yorkers will feel the same way when Mr. Robertson conducts what’s being billed as “a definitive performance” of the work with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and a “mass choir of New York City students” as part of the Carmina Burana Project in February of 2012.

The balance between orchestra and chorus was not always ideal, at least from where we sat in the dress circle, especially when the former was playing at full volume. It’s a problem I’ve noticed before at Powell, and may simply be an unavoidable by-product of the hall’s acoustics. Performances, in any case, were beyond reproach. There was also fine work from the Children’s Chorus, brought in from the wings to stand in front of the stage for their brief appearance in the “Court of Love” section.

Cyndia Sieden

All three vocal soloists had plenty of legit opera credentials, so it’s no surprise that they acted their various roles as effectively as they sang them. Baritone David Adam Moore has the most to do, portraying everything from a pining lover (“Dies, nox et omnia” – a killer aria that switches rapidly between falsetto and chest voice) to tormented libertine (“Estuans interius”). His Abbot of “Cucaniensis” (which I’ve seen translated as Cuckoominster or Cockaigne, among other things) was spot on as well. Soprano Cyndia Sieden was utterly charming in “Stetit puella”, and she nailed the daunting glissando that opens “Dulcissime” with ease and delicacy.

Richard Troxell

The tenor has only one song – the chilling “Olim lacus coleuram”, in which a swan laments being roasted for dinner – but Richard Troxell made the most of it, singing from memory and with great dramatic effect. The number lies absurdly high, forcing the singer almost entirely into falsetto, but Mr. Troxell sounded completely comfortable. Mr. Robertson had him enter through the orchestra during the orchestral introduction – one of those nice dramatic touches referred to above.

This concluding concert of the 2010–2011 season will be presented again Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, May 7 and 8. It’s a splendid night of vivid, colorful, music making and a fine way to welcome the season. As they sing in the “Primo Vere” (“Early Spring”) section of Carmina Burana:

Rerum tanta novitas in solemni vere
et veris auctoritas iubet nos guadere

“Nature's great renewal in solemn Springtime
and Spring's spectacle bids us to rejoice.”

For more information, including details of the 2011 – 2012 season, you can call 314-534-1700, visit slso.org, or follow @slso on Twitter.