Spirited Carmina Burana
and Five Tudor Portraits
Carmina Burana and Five
John Skelton’s often ribald
Tudor Portraits
verse in a constantly inven-
G Live, Guildford
Rating: * * * % ¢
tive musical landscape.
The Brandenburg Sinfonia
and Backhouse were at their
I suspect, due to a little
tweaking of the choir’s amplification in an attempt to
overcome the hall’s highly
unfavourable acoustic.
composers
best here, capturing the nu-
coincidentally started work
ances of the rich orchestra-
polished
on similar large-scale choral
tion, whilst featuring some
Vaughan Williams
works based on archaic
poetry, mixing Latin with the
beautiful solo playing from
cello, flute, cor anglais and
bassoon.
Unfortunately though, in
louder sections, their enthusiasm often overwhelmed the
choir, especially the men,
were treated to the odd tinkle
IN
1935,
two
vernacular, offsetting love
ballads
against
bawdy
drinking songs and making
phenomenal
demands
on
their musicians.
One was Carl Orff, whose
who strove valiantly against
Carmina Burana has been
beloved of choirs, audiences
the impediment of their lower numbers.
and
advertising
executives
The
other was Vaughan
Williams’
The
prano
ever since.
far
subtler,
and
star was
Claire
mezzo-so-
Barnett-Jones,
who never allowed her characterisation
of
a
wench
ular, Five Tudor Portraits.
beauty of her gloriously vi-
Last Saturday saw Jeremy
Backhouse
Vivace
conduct
Chorus
with
his
the
interfere
drunken
therefore inevitably less pop-
Having enjoyed such a rare
treat,
the
audience
percussion-heavy
works.
Burana.
The
five
Portraits
are
tings of 16th century poet
the
brant tone.
Brandenburg Sinfonia in a
spirited rendition of both
charming and energetic set-
with
settled
down for the more familiar,
Carmina
Here the balance was better, owing to Orff’s’ simpler
choral textures but also,
Ensemble was not quite as
as in the
earlier
and we
and bong beyond what Orff
had actually written.
However,
the
excellent
Farnham Youth Choir and
Vivace Chorus shone, espe-
cially the ladies, whose
phrases, by turns warm and
agile, were presented with
admirable clarity.
The soloists were taken to
the extremes of their voices
but with never a moment’s
unease to the sparkling, if
somewhat reserved, singing
of baritone Gareth Brynmor
John and soprano Rosalind
Coad, while tenor John-Colyn
Gyeantey’s stratospherically
high vocal cameo as the
roasting swan was pitched
absolutely perfectly - plaintive but never grotesque.
Roy Rashbrook