Orff

A week or so ago to the Royal Festival Hall to hear, for the first time, Carmina Burana, a work of which I had long been aware but had never gotten around to hearing.

As it turned out, a warm evening, although the cloudscapes were interesting, suggesting that trouble might be on the way.

We joined the train at Epsom along with a very cheerful party of twenty something young ladies, dressed very high, already fairly well oiled and with two more bottles of wine being dealt with on the journey to Waterloo. It was quite early and we were interested to know where they planned to kick off properly, but the young lady I asked did not seem to understand (or to care) what I was asking, so we did not get to know. The Waterloo concourse also seemed very noisy, not helped by a loud busker doing his stuff at the Thames end.

Into the Hall for our picnic, to find that the suspended art work had been refreshed. At the time I thought it was rather silly, with the stuff at reference 3 (from a couple of years ago, several refreshes ago) being more my sort of thing, but I am getting used to it.

The Poulenc 'Stabat Mater', involving, inter alia, two harps, was very good. The BH choir count was 141, the first time that I have known her do such a thing. I failed to complete. Interesting to hear a large choir, a change from our usual diet of Ripieno, and from where I associate to my late father's observation, in connection with a Mahler symphony, that 100 violins playing quietly is quite different from 10 violins playing loudly.

The Orff 'Carmina Burana' was interesting to have heard and included some good passages. And lots of percussion and flute. But I am not sure that we will be going again.

The small number of male altos (aka counter-tenors) were brigaded with the much larger number of female altos (aka contralto, my mother's voice). While the treble contingent from Tiffin School had to do a lot of sitting for their small amount of air time in the Orff. They also had to wear slightly comical striped blazers, very like the one's worn at my secondary school.

The baritone solo for the Orff was Simon Keenlyside, who managed to look rather embarrassed about being there at all and had a rather off-hand manner. He also reminded me of the smoking & drinking ghost writer in the episode of Morse called 'Second Time Around', who may, in that episode, have been called Reardon. Be that as it may, this chap could certainly do the business. While the soprano, Louise Alder, went in for still & statuesque when she was sitting out. She also had very high heels, so it was perhaps just as well that she did more sitting than standing.

Being in row G meant that we were very close to the action, which was good for centre stage, but one could not take in what was going on around the orchestra without moving the eyes around, if not the head. With taking one's cue from the conductor being a not very satisfactory substitute. Not doing that many orchestral concerts it is not a big deal, but maybe sitting a few rows further back would be better.

As it was, our neighbours in row G were a couple of a similar age from Richmond (aka outer Kingston), who knew all about getting to the various London venues from the suburbs. They also knew rather more about the location of the various Festival Hall festivities than we did.

Interested to see from the programme that Sir George Fistonich, the founder-owner of the Villa Maria operation, responsible for our day to day tipple, is a proud sponsor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The chap snapped below.

Se references 1 and 2.

Afterwards, got to Waterloo just in time to catch a train which would take us to Raynes Park - with just catching meaning that I got on in the ordinary way, while BH only got on because a muscular young man pulled the doors apart for her - after which she got on to some subdued cheering, looking rather pleased with herself. Raynes Park platform library shut when we got there, but there did not look to be much there anyway.

Back with Orff, a little research after the event revealed that he was a reasonably unusual composer and that this work, very popular in Nazi Germany, made him a great deal of money. He went through denazification, getting away with it, albeit with tarnished reputation, which meant he could continue to enjoy the royalties and live to the ripe old age of 86, having got through four wives.

Quoting loosely from Wikipedia: 'Carmina Burana is a manuscript of more than 200 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent, and satirical. They were written principally in Medieval Latin, a few in Middle High German, and some with traces of Old French. Some are macaronic, a mixture of Latin and German or French vernacular'. One can see why this would have been entirely acceptable to the Nazi artistic authorities, playing as it does to their roots in a heroic Germanic past while largely avoiding the church. And none of that racially unsound, modern nonsense about it.

Reference 1: https://www.villamaria.co.nz/.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/irritation.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/08/art.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/vespers.html.