CSO's 'Carmina Burana' gives audience event to remember

The Charleston Symphony Orchestra opened its season Saturday with Carl Orff's stirringly barbaric "Carmina Burana" (1936), which played to a packed house at Gaillard Auditorium.

"Carmina Burana" is a modern oratorio of 24 poems written in the 13th century by monks and scholars for their own secret amusement after a hard day of copying Aristotle and St. Jerome. The poems are resolutely of the flesh rather than the spirit, and Orff gives them settings that emphasize the percussion and brass.

Beth Albert flourished her drumsticks over the kettledrums at the beginning and was beating away like a madwoman at the frenzied conclusion of "Carmina Burana" as the massive choral and orchestral sound provoked screams from the audience.

With its multiple choruses, solo parts and orchestral demands, "Carmina Burana" is not played by most symphonies. But if you can do it, it is one of those pieces that allow the orchestra to flaunt just how much more musical muscle it has than your run-of-the-mill music group.

The Charleston Symphony Orchestra is strong indeed, with many first-rate musicians molded beautifully by David Stahl.

Orff wanted the soloists to be dramatic actors, and he would have been pleased with the trio on hand. Countertenor Richard Bordas used whining sounds and gurgling embellishments to vividly depict a swan as it expires over a tavern fire.

Baritone Gary Martin gave a number of musical thumbnail sketches: a happy drunk, an unhappy drunk, a lascivious monk, a drunken lascivious monk and others.

Soprano Lisette Oropesa, with pure tone and a powerfully high range, sang of young women dreaming of their lovers.

The CSO Chorus, led by Robert Taylor, and the CSO Gospel Choir, led by Glen R. Nixon, deftly negotiated Orff's difficult choral part, which demands power, flexibility and good diction.

Ann Cheek's Ashley River Unichorus was an emotionally compelling Children's Chorus.

The audience came expecting a musical triumph, and the Charleston Symphony, with the help of its musical collaborators, made "Carmina Burana" an event to remember.