Review: Complexity of 'Carmina Burana' mastered

Posted by arts_reviews

Posted: September 28, 2007 - 5:31 pm

By Maia Nolan
Daily News correspondant

Memo to the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra: If you’re trying to get people fired up about classical music, mission accomplished.

The ASO kicked off its 2007-2008 season Saturday night in the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts’ Atwood Concert Hall with an incendiary performance of Carl Orff’s cantata “Carmina Burana” (Hollywood’s favorite battle-scene soundtrack selection) plus two less bombastic pieces, Edward Elgar’s Serenade for Strings in E minor and Johannes Brahms’s “Academic Festival Overture.”

Anchorage Symphony Board of Directors president Jim Torgerson opened the evening with good news: The board recently renewed conductor Randall Craig Fleischer’s contract, which means Anchorage audiences can look forward to at least three more seasons with the dynamic maestro.

Here’s more good news: The symphony is starting the season in top form. After playing the national anthem and the Alaska Flag song (isn’t it wonderful to live someplace where people know the words to their state song and sing along?), the orchestra launched into a polished, near-flawless “Academic Festival Overture.” Particular credit goes to the strings for their rich, even tone, and to the high woodwinds and double reeds for fine work in exposed sections.

Following the Brahms, the strings delivered a perfectly lovely Serenade. Elgar’s delicate, ethereal work stood in serene contrast to the robust “Academic Festival Overture,” and featured deft solo work by concertmaster Kathryn Hoffer.

Brahms and Elgar were really just hors d’oeuvres, however; the main attraction Saturday night was “Carmina Burana,” Orff’s sometimes-passionate, sometimes-playful, go-big-or-go-home masterpiece, featuring the Anchorage Concert Chorus, Alaska Chamber Singers and Alaska Children’s Choir.

(Here’s a little Atwood trivia for you: According to production manager Lauren Mackenzie Miller, “Carmina Burana” puts more performers on the Atwood stage at one time than any production in the Center’s history. Since Miller has been backstage at the ACPA since day one, it’s probably safe to take her word for it.)

Impassioned and expressive, “Carmina Burana” is musical hedonism at its best, and a challenging piece that keeps musicians on their toes. Orff plays with meter and tempo like a kid with a short attention span — in the third movement, “Veris leta facies,” for example, there are 11 meter changes in the first 12 measures. (That’s about 10 more than in most compositions.) Mix in three soloists, 75 instrumentalists and over 250 singers, and you’re dealing with a lot of variables. But you couldn’t ask for a more fluid, cohesive performance than the one delivered Saturday at the Atwood.

Soloists Julia Turner Cooke, Thomas Trotter and Ryan Taylor turned in riveting performances. Cooke, a soprano with a bell-tone voice, provided respite from some of the piece’s more intense passages, and tenor Trotter’s expressive performance drew laughs during the lumbering “Olim lacus colueram” movement. But it was Taylor, the baritone, who seemed to bring the most to the performance; his voice has a clear, bold timbre that gives it an otherworldly, almost angelic quality.

Members of the Alaska Children’s Choir more than lived up to the group’s reputation for artistry and professionalism that belies the members’ tender ages.

While the soloists were a treat, the greatest praise belongs to the symphony and chorus members who anchored “Carmina Burana,” breathed life into its more delicate passages, and brought home the big sound the audience expected on “O fortuna,” the magnificently ominous movement that bookends the cantata. They were rewarded with a predictable, enthusiastic, and well-deserved standing ovation.

“Carmina Burana” repeats Sunday, Sept. 30, at 4 p.m. at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are available at www.centertix.net or 263-2787. Word on the street Saturday night was that Sunday tickets were going fast.

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