Carl Orff belongs to that select group of composers, known as “one-piecers”.
Everybody knows his Carmina Burana; most
people probably haven’t heard a note of the rest of his oeuvre, which is large and varied. All right, being remembered for
one work alone is better than not being remembered at all, but
in Orff’s case he should be – and once was – famous for something
else: his educational work. When I went to Teachers’ Training
School in the 1960s (How Time flies!) we spent a substantial
part of our music education studying Orff Schulwerk. Originally
created in the 1920s, this is a music training method, with
very little music theory. Instead it advocates practical music-making
where ensemble work is central to the course. He also created
an instrumentarium, consisting of mainly
percussive instruments including the xylophone. The renaissance
in our time of the recorder is very much thanks to Orff.
One more aspect of his music training concept is worth mentioning:
movement, dance and improvisation. It seems that the formal
music training Orff had in his youth
was of very little importance to his development as a composer,
nor was the music of contemporaries such as Debussy, Strauss,
Schönberg. It was when he started to study the works of the
old masters – Palestrina, Lassus,
Monteverdi, Schütz – that he found his own voice.
When
his break-through came in 1937, with the aforementioned Carmina Burana, he finally knew, at the age of
42, that this was his true style. He rejected everything pre-Carmina, except three works, of which two are on the disc
I so far haven’t started reviewing ... but soon will. All of
them are transcriptions, or arrangements, or reworkings
of music by Claudio Monteverdi. It had been fairer to have mentioned
Monteverdi on the front of the record, but you have to look
on the back-cover to find his name and even then it is in very
small print. But since this disc is part of a bunch of discs
featuring Orff’s music, all of them
with a similar layout, it is perhaps understandable.
What
about the music? In 1925, when Orff
presented these versions of Lamento d’Arianna and
Ballo dell’ingrate,
Monteverdi was little played. Interest in early music was awakening;
Ottorino Respighi made his own performing version of La Favola d’Orfeo for example. Today, with the early music movement
in full swing, we are used to original instruments and historically
correct performance practice. Thus the first bars of Arianna’s
lament come as a shock. It isn’t the colourful Stokowski-way
of re-writing old music; Orff is sparse
in his instrumentation. He uses a couple of basset-horns, a
couple of harps, three lutes – and the full string section of
the Munich Radio Orchestra! And that at once gives the music
a decidedly romantic feeling. Arianna
– or Ariadne (for she sings
in German) - then enters in the shape of Rose Wagemann
who is closer to Wagner’s Valhalla than Monteverdi’s Mantua. Her is a fruity, vibrato-laden contralto
and I suppose that by now all early music addicts have stopped
reading this review. If so, that’s a pity, for the interesting
thing is that after a time you get used to what you hear and
accept it on its own terms. What I mean is that with our “modern
early baroque ears”, if you accept the metaphor, we will never
feel transported back to 1608. However a trip back to 1925 is
also of historical interest. And when you get used to the singing
style you realize that the singer is good, she is observant
to the text and she can tame her vibrato. Singing in German
makes the music sound more four-square than necessary but still,
in the end, I was deeply moved by the performance. And interestingly,
after finishing the Orff-version I
played the real thing with the right instruments and soprano
specializing in early music, and it left me unmoved. If you
are still reading: give it a try!
I
have to admit that Tanz
der Spröden (Ballo
dell’ingrate), also from 1608, was
harder to digest, and the fault is probably mine. Here, in a
more dramatic context, the singing style became an obstacle
rather than a help to get into the action. The singers are good
of course; besides Rose Wagemann, (whom I have come across only once before. She sings
the House-keeper in Leinsdorf’s recording
of Korngold’s Die tote
Stadt, recorded roughly in the same period as these Orff-pieces were made, i.e. mid-1970s) we have world-stars
like Lucia Popp (glittering as usual), and the imposing Karl
Ridderbusch who has an almost tenoral
top-register but also produces an impressive low D. His delivery
of parts of the role is even more Wagnerian than Miss Wagemann’s.
The most entertaining part of this Ballo
is the purely orchestral “Tanz der Spröden”,
which sports lush string playing. The little we hear of the
Bavarian Radio Chorus is good. Kurt Eichhorn
is an experienced conductor and having the composer as supervisor
is a guarantee that this is an authentic performance. The explanatory
text in the booklet by K.H. Ruppel
is a great help and we also get the sung texts, but no translations.
The sound quality is good without being exceptional.
The
playing time is very short, less than 42 minutes, but honestly
I don’t know what else could have been logically placed as filler(s).
The only possible work is Orff’s third Monteverdi-piece, Orpheus, and it occupies another disc in this series.
Anyone
with a historical interest (an interest in the not so distant
past) or those of you who already know Carmina Burana and want to hear something else by Orff, could give the disc a chance. Maybe you should try to
listen before purchase. I warmed to the Ariadne-performance
and will certainly return to this disc again – but probably
not very often.
Göran Forsling
See also review
by Jonathan Woolf
Ariadne – Rose