Carmina Burana

Saturday was one of the hottest days of the year. For me, it was hot not only during the day. It remained hot after the sun went down. But it was so for a different reason. After another talk at the HKSHP on Schopenhauer's views on women , I rushed to the Cultural Centre for the last concert of the HKPO season. I have been waiting for this hot event for quite some time. It was the night for Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. The piece has long been a favourite of all my hi fi friends. They love it for its spectucular sonic fireworks. Me too. But I never heard it live. Neither had they. Saturday was our dream come true.

However before that highlight, we had a new piece of music by one of China's new composers who studied under a French composer Messiaen. He is Chen Qi-gang. According to the Programme Notes, he was born on 28th August 1955. His father was a famous calligrapher, painter and senior lecturer at the Beijing Academy of Fine Arts. He studied composition for 5 years with Luo Zhongrong at the Central Conservatoire in Beijing, then won the first prize in the nationwide composition competition and was given the chance to study in France in 1984. Therefore his composition had a French flavor. The name of this first piece of the evening played by the HKPO under a Chinese conductor Yu Long was in Chinese "Paradise Lost". It had a very 20th century feel about it : there was a lot of dissonance, a lot of silences, some quite unusual orchestration, and much use of percussions. It was the first time I heard it. I got the feeling that it sounded a bit like Impressionist music because of the piling up of almost continuous unbroken waves and waves of string sounds, broken only by the occasional winds but also perhaps becasue the way he uses percussions and some of the motifs palyed by the winds did seem to have a distinct Chinese style rhythm and tones to it. When I looked up the Programme Notes to get some clues, I discovered the name of the piece: "Enchantements oubliés" ( Forgotten Charms) and the fact that the Chinese composer studied composition in France. The Notes say that at first, he deliberately avoided Chinese stylistic influence and only began to introduce such Chinese elements in the early 1990s. He was appointed the official composer of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and it was during this period that he wrote this piece which had been commissioneed by the Orchestre National de France in 2004. It was first performed at the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 11th January 2008 and in Shangahi on 4th May, 2010 . One commentator said that the music seems to portray a beautiful garden and of Nature. I cannot agree more with him. I do not know how to describe this but there is a distinctive contemplative feel to the music in its quieter passages. My friends did not like it but it sounded quite fine to me.

But the highlight of the evening was doubtless Carmina Burana performed with the assistance of the impressive Shanghai Opera House Choir (SOHC)  which I first heard when they sang in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 under Edo de Waart in late May this year and with additional members from the HK Children's Choir under Apollo Wong. We also had three soloist singers soprano Chen Xiaoduo, tenor Peter Maus and Liao Changyong. According to the Programme Notes, Chen graduated from the China Conservatory, won the Belgium Vera Rosa Award in 2001, the Best New Singer Award in Taiwan 2002 and the Best Vocal Performance at the Wenhua Awards of the Chinese Government and sang for the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in its 2009 North America tour. Maus is a veteran singer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin since 1976 and is now teaching at the U of Arts in Berlin. Liao is also an experienced singer, a graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1995 and now department head of its vocal and opera department. I was quite surprised that despite his obvious age, Maus could still sing so well. Liao  had a very impressive, steady and very mellow voice but doubtless, I was most impressed by Chen, a very tall, slim Northern Chinese young lady whose voice is as beautiful as her person. She appeared last night in a bare top white long evening gown with what looked like flower like knot rising diagonally from the top left to the top right of the upper part of her dress, setting off to advantage her clear white skin. She sang in the coloratura style. I was a bit surprised at how good her voice was. She could sing very high notes without any obvious strain. I already knew the standard of the SOHC in their May appearance but I was quite surprised at the uniformly high standard of all three soloists. The HK Children's Choir sang with their angelic voices in their customary high standards.

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is the first of three musical theatre pieces called Trionfi and was first premiered in Feburary 1953. The piece was based on certain anonymous manuscripts of certain poems discovered in 1803 at a monastery at Beneditkeuren in Upper Bavaria composed by the wandering scholars of the 12th and 13th centuries, full of life, desires, joy and  parodic fun describing the changing fortunes of man. Orff came across them in 1935 and used them for his song and dance theatre. He chose 24 of these poems to create what he calls "magical pictures". It was first performed in June 1937 in Frankfurt. It was "a simple celebration words and music of the timelessness of natural existence." Everything is dedicated to the goddess of Fortuna in the very famous opening song O fortuna Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune Empress of the World) and Fortune Plango vulnera ( I bemoan the wounds of fortune). We had three parts of Carmina Burana last night: Part I Spring and On the Green Veris leta facies ( The merry face of spring) , Omnia Sol Temprat ( The sun warms everything), Ecce Gratum ( Behold, Be Grateful ) or the pleasant spring) which celebrates new life with a boisterous village dance Tanz followed by 5 poems of young loves: Floret silva nobilis (The noble woods are burgeoning); Chramer, gip die varwe mir (Shopkeeper, give me color); Those who go round and round;, Chume, chume, geselle min (Come, come, go to me) and Were diu werit alle min (Were all the world mine). Part II In the Tavern deals with man's freewheeling existence in the German taverns:  Estruans interius (Burning Inside)  Olim lacus colueram (Once I lived on lakes); Ego Sum Abbas (I am the Abbot of Cockaigne) In taberna quando sumus (When we are in the tavern)     Part III The Court of Love deals with the liberation of love: Amor volat undique (Cupid Flies everywhere) Dies, nox et omnia (Day, Night and Everything) Stetit puella (A girl stood), Circa mea pectora (In my heart) Si puer cum puellula (If a boy with a girl) Veni, Veni, Venias ( Come, Come o come) In trutina ( In the Balance) Tempus est iocumdum (This is the joyful time) Dulcissime (Sweetest One) Ave Formosissima (Hail, most beautiful one)  and it concludes with another version of the O Fortuna. It was a very long work, with plenty of singing, interspersed with pure music with a great deal of instrumental color from all sections of the orchestra especially the timpani and percussions and it had three pianos! Some of the lyrics are most explicit in its language eg. "If a boy with a girl tarries in a little room, happy is their coupling. Love rises up, and between them, prudery is driven away, and ineffable game begins in their limbs, arms and lips"; "In the wavering balance of my feelings, set against each other, lascivious love and modesty. But I choose what I see, and submit my neck to the yoke; I yield to the sweet yoke" and "This is a joyful time, O maiden, rejoice with them, young men! Oh, oh, oh,! I am bursting out all over! I am burning all over with first love! New, new love is what I am dying of!"  Most surprising to find these from the Middle Ages which is supposed to be dominated by monkish values on chastity and purity of thoughts! It has certainly given me a completely different view of that age in Europe. It was a most spectacular and musical sonic feast with orchestral colors used to the full. At the end of the concert, none of my friends said they had any complaints! And they are right. Carmina Burana was a very fitting close to a whole season of musical enjoyment, with symphonies, chamber works, violin concertos, piano concertos, cello concertos, choral singing, operatic singing, sypmhonic poems, jazz pieces, miscellaneous small pieces of every description, with famous artists and conductors coming from all parts of the globe. The HKPO has finally bloomed into a world class orchestra. But all good things must come to a close. We'll have to wait for the new season to begin in September. I cannot wait for the new season to begin. We already bought the tickets. There will be a concert almost every weekend and some during the week. But until then, I shall have to satisfy myself with my hi fi at home.