These Orff discs, also
available separately, have now been
consolidated into an Arts Ultimate
Collection boxed set. Recorded in
the 1970s – between 1972 and 1974 to
be precise - under the stewardship of
Leitner and Eichorn, in some cases under
Orff’s own authorisation, they still
make a formidable claim on the collector.
Each is reviewed in turn below.
Orpheus –
free adaptation of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo
(1923)
Orff based his performing
realisation of L'Orfeo on the
1607 production. It was first staged
in Mannheim in 1923 and was an experiment
at revivifying baroque opera through
the medium of modern orchestral perspective.
It was a process to which he was to
return several times, lastly in 1940
(in the performing edition heard on
this disc) when compression and operatic
intensity were at the forefront. Orff
employed two basset horns, two harps
and three double strung lutes and the
sonorities generated are rich and freely
expressive.
That said, given the
nature of the realisation, this is really
a curio that will be of most interest
to devotees of the development of Orff's
vocal and theatrical powers. Another
inducement for them is that Orff takes
the part of speaker. It's sung in German
and the modern instruments are rich
and warm; the overlapping strings and
antique colour are evocative and sensuous
and the romanticised perspective gives
weight to the drama.
The cast is obviously
top notch. Prey is ardent, though there
are times when he sounds strenuous -
in the middle of the First Act in particular.
Orff is especially keen to promote the
winds. By means of underpinning orchestral
pizzicati and wind interjections he
cultivates a sprung rhythm that suits
his purpose. Sample Act II's Weh, dunkles
Schicksal! [Track 9] where Elysian winds
coalesce with muted strings producing
a painterly veil, albeit one rudely
interrupted by brass rasps. Popp has
less to do though she rises to the Act
III duet with touching simplicity. Wagemann
and Ridderbusch are both commanding.
Kurt Eichhorn directs his forces with
assurance and the sound has come up
vividly. The libretto is in German.
Klage der Ariadne
(1608) – Lamento d’Arianna di
Claudio Monteverdi
After the stunning
success of Carmina Burana in
1937 Orff took scissors to his past
and insisted that henceforth it should
be known as his Op.1. He made only one
exception, allowing his own settings
of Monteverdi to be performed - the
Lamento dell'Arianna and Ballo
dell'Ingrate. Orff augmented his
orchestra with two basset-horns and
three double strung lutes and it's in
this manner that Orff pays some noble
homage to the stile espressivo of
Monteverdi. The Lament of Ariadne
(Lamento dell'Arianna) is
a surviving operatic fragment and was
written for Mantua. It was followed
a week later by the Ballo dell'Ingrate,
though this was destined for a wedding
feast. In this way Orff constructs the
laments and Ballo in an arc from despair
to light.
These 1974 recordings
were conducted by Kurt Eichorn and supervised
by Orff in what we can suppose are pretty
much definitive performances as to his
intentions with regard to the orchestral
colour, the vocal stresses and the emotive
temperature. The German text of Klage
der Ariadne is by Orff himself and
the companion work has a free realisation
by his colleague at the Munich school
of dancing in the 1920s, Dorothée
Günther. The apportioning of the
roles is well nigh perfect but even
amongst the stellar quartet it's perhaps
nowadays the least well remembered,
Rose Wagemann, who makes the most moving
impression. This is not simply because
she bears the emotive burden of the
Lament of Ariadne on her own.
Centred and dramatic, hers is a voice
that commands immediate admiration.
Her voice suits Orff's frankly romanticised
declamation with remarkable precision
and she makes a cumulatively moving
impression - allied to which the voice
is beautiful. The most intense point
is Träume, selige Träume
where Orff's bass accents and stark
romanticism conjure up the shade of
Monteverdi without either pastiche or
reinvention.
The auburn-hued instrumental
string passage in Hört, werte
Damen, part of the Tanz der Spröden,
breaks up the recitative in a peculiarly
impressive way. Ridderbusch sings with
gravity, depth and dignity though it's
the passage Wie unerträglich
anzusehn, that devoutly entwined
arioso, where the bass reveals his strengths
in melismatic singing. Later on, in
the dance, we hear the pizzicati and
harp and lute sonorities that are part
of Orff's rich instrumental tapestry
- rich but certainly not glutinous.
The chorus has its moment late in the
work; the engineers recess its sound
deliberately to give an impression of
spatial separateness. We also hear the
clear, immaculate Lucia Popp as Amor
and the spinto mezzo of Hanna Schwarz.
The restoration sounds
excellent; it has used that much touted
24 bit - 96 kHz system. Notes are in
German, English, French and Italian
- the texts are in German only. This
forms part of the Orff series on Arts;
the timing is short and in the context
of the composer's development it may
not seem an essential purchase. But
it's finely done, rewarding - and moving.
Carmina Burana (1935-36)
Two admired Carmina
Buranas came out at roughly the
same time; this one and the Jochum.
But it was the latter that prevailed
in the market and Arts now revive the
earlier of the two recordings, presided
over by the admirable Ferdinand Leitner.
Firstly Arts has done a fine job of
restoration and their documentation,
full notes (German/English/French) and
texts (Latin/English only) are well
done. As for the original recording
it needs to be pointed out, not least
in view of the sonic spectaculars of
this work that were to come, that there
are some balance weaknesses. There's
a degree of spread in the sonic picture
which Arts obviously hasn't been able
to rectify and it does make for one
or two "interesting" percussion moments.
The lack of ideal clarity is certainly
problematic.
The choir is able but
an edge toward the flabby and whilst
this is a work that courts brashness
with considerable success there is a
degree of acoustic brashness to its
contribution; and being picky not an
entirely successful blend. Barry McDaniel
convinces - his showing is fine, even
those Italianate lurches in Estuans
interius; what happened to him?
Soprano soloist Ruth-Margaret Pütz
copes creditably with the strong demands
though some are in truth too excessive;
try Dulcissime. Michael Cousins
bears some exorbitant demands and his
high tenor just about sustains full
body and tone, even if it does sound
less than comfortable. Roland Hermann
has less in the way of ungrateful writing.
Leitner encourages
some sympathetic woodwind playing -
flutes especially - and moulds the performance
with generosity though not quite the
level of electricity some may require.
One can see why this ceded ground to
the Jochum but it does have attractions
of its own - though now strictly for
the historicist; this after all was
an Orff authorised recording and that
gives it cachet still, if not an obvious
recommendation.
Catulli Carmina (1943)
Orff explored the poetry
of Catullus and Sappho in these two
parts of his Trionfi, of which
the first part was Carmina Burana.
It was the Roman setting of Catulli
Carmina that led him to delve further
and a reading of Sophocles crystallised
the ambition to set the poems and fragments
of Sappho. The results here are overwhelmingly
authoritative, not solely inasmuch as
they have the composer's imprimatur,
but rather because they sound so fresh
and idiomatic. Though I ought to say
at the outset that those, like Churchill
and Shakespeare, blessed with little
Greek or Latin are going to find this
release something of a catastrophe -
there are no texts and summaries are
no substitute. We need to see how Orff
adapted his musical expression to the
very particular demands that these very
different poetic traditions embody.
That said, and it's
a big caveat, we can still admire the
dramatic unity Orff evokes, the sense
of interjectory and conversational ellipsis,
and those moments of poignant unaccompanied
recitation that add so much of a sense
of intimacy to the scores, especially
the Catullus. The Chants - sample Vivamus
mea Lesbia - are brisk and fluent, the
chorus sounding notably well drilled
and we also get the chance to listen
the women of the Cologne Radio Choir
in their velvet soft Jucundum mea vite.
The scoring is correspondingly light
- solo pianos and percussion.
Trionfo di Afrodite
followed in 1950-51. Full of ostinati
and melismas this is scored for fuller
orchestral forces and generates its
effect through a kind of hypnotic oscillatory
repetition. The melismas soar ever upwards
(Sposa e Sposo, Part III) and the choir
and soloists cope heroically with the
sometimes ungrateful writing; throughout
in fact the soloists and especially
Leitner are tremendously involved and
involving. The restoration sounds first
class.
Prometheus (1968)
Prometheus is
by a long measure the most recent of
Orff’s works in this set and it’s equally
clearly the most challenging. It sets
a text, in Greek, derived from Aeschylus’s
Prometheus and followed directly
from Orff’s settings of Antigone
and Sophocles’ Oedipus. In Prometheus
however his means had become increasingly
stark, with declamation, not singing,
being the means of communicating the
text and the supporting instrumentation
being largely percussive but augmented
by woodwind, ceremonial brass, harps,
double-basses and pianos.
Orff’s musical focus
is here rhythmic, with expressive outbursts
emerging from declaimed text with abrasive
force. The solo narrative, augmented
by choral stretches, is indeed sometimes
unaccompanied, or else garnished - if
that’s the right word - by a battery
of percussive interjectory colour. Those
who have heard reconstructions of music
for the Greek theatre will perhaps recognise
in Orff’s setting a kind of heightened,
almost phantasmagoric extrapolation
of the stasis and paragraphal percussive
points that animated their theatre.
All this is remarkable
but pretty heavy weather. There are
certainly unceasing moments of textual
illumination, though you’ll have a hard
job following the text as it’s solely
in English and there are only a few
edit points to guide one. One such is
the early and visceral moment when Prometheus
is "smitten with hammer" as
he’s chained to the rock, a moment accompanied
with the requisite amount of hammering.
The macabre laugh of Power is well characterised
– all the singers cope magnificently
with their essentially spoken or declaimed
parts – and the weird occasional melismas,
falsetto ascents (disc 1, track 4 –
Scene IV) and snarls that stud the text
act as dramatic high points.
Roland Hermann deserves
all praise for his fantastic control
in the central role and in Scene VI
we meet in concentrated form the powerfully
stratospheric Colette Lorand. There’s
luxury casting down the list and a conductor
only too well versed in Orff lore. This
two-disc set is a very tough nut; it’s
a product of textual analysis of the
most austere kind and all musical devices
are subservient to textual meaning.
There are no lush orchestral string
choirs – forget the ebullience and freedoms
of the pre-War Orff. Much of it, to
unsympathetic auditors, will seem penitentially
awful. But it remains an important work
in Orff’s oeuvre and a necessary component
of this vibrant and still recommendable
boxed set.
Jonathan Woolf
