PSO REVIEW: Carmina Burana

Went to the PSO on Sunday:

Te Deum by Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) - Was unable to enjoy it thanks to a woman sitting in front of me freaking KNITTING...! Lady, this isn't your living room. I shushed her eventually but the first few minutes of the piece were ruined for me. Last time I sit in Family Circle with these riff raff! A recording by Honeck of this impressive-sounding piece is available and the PSO will perform it next season.

Haydn Oboe Concerto - Whatev-- it was nice enough. I suspect it was only played to give longtime PSO oboist Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida a (not undeserved) day in the sun.

Carmina Burana - this is a piece that's close to my heart and which I have some strong opinions about. Carmina Burana is impossible to screw up entirely, but I was largely unimpressed by Maestro Honeck's interpretative choices, big and small alike. Most notably, he ZOOMED through the brass fanfares in O Fortuna and everywhere else Orff wallows in pomp. These tempi choices didn't add anything and diminished the impact of some of the most thrilling music ever written by man. I got the sense that Honeck wanted to get through these sections as quickly as possible, perhaps not wanting to revel in the biggest, loudest moments in the work. Catholic guilt, perhaps?

One of the big interpretive questions in Carmina is how to make the chorus and soloists sound. The vocalists in the deservedly famous 1960 Ormandy achieved a unique blend of monastic chant and liturgical singing that reflected the origins of the texts. Recent versions like Christian Thielemann's outstanding record with the Deutsche Oper Berlin aim for a more modern, operatic sound. But as far as I could tell, the Mendelssohn Choir adopted no change to its usual style for this piece, a missed opportunity by Honeck.

The soloists were okay: soprano Celena Shafer got the job done, but come on Celena, holding the lyric book and turning its pages while you sang the "In Trutina" solo-- which has exactly six lines of verse-- was ridiculous. Baritone Hugh Russell had personality but didn't project well and was often drowned out by the orchestra. Tenor Christopher Pfund was the best, which is unsurprising given that he's apparently made a mini-career of playing the roasting swan at Carmina performances throughout the US.

There is a tendency among some critics and classical musicians to dismiss Carmina as light music notable only for its humorous aspects (e.g. "Carmina nice break from the serious" by the Post-Gazette's Andrew Druckenbrod). I assume this is because the piece is performed so damned much. But no, it's a serious, complex work, and even the "comedic" parts have much more going on: a deep humanity, hallucinatory imagery (the swan), and social satire ("In Taberna"), qualities that call to mind another great German musical that's difficult to classify, Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera. This unfortunate simplification of Carmina seemed to hang over the PSO's performance: Honeck shied away from the biggest passages and the soloists over-played the humor by hamming it up.

A final criticism is that the words of the Carmina Burana poems should have been projected onto the screens next to the stage. Although I myself have read the texts numerous times, I imagine that for most of the 2,600-odd people in the sold-out Heinz Hall, it was like watching a foreign film without subtitles. The lyrics weren't included in the program books, either. It's a shame, since the poetry is essential to understanding the meaning and mysteries of Carmina, with its raucous drinking songs, yes, but also the enigmatic expressions in the love songs and even O Fortuna. It is much more difficult to dismiss Carmina when the words and music are taken in together.

2.5/5 Duchamps