Orff: Carmina Burana (SACD review)

Hei-Kwung Hong, soprano; Stanford Olsen, tenor; Earl Patriarco, baritone; Gwinnett Young Singers; Donald Runnicles, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Telarc SACD-60575.

Way back in 2002 when I first reviewed this disc, people didn't know if the SACD or the DVD-Audio high-end format would eventually win the day, or whether, as I predicted, both formats would bite the dust. Well, it turns out that founder Sony Corporation gave up on SACD far sooner than many other record companies did, a number of them still using the format. It was clear back then, however, that the folks at Telarc were counting on SACD and trying to have it two ways; that is, they issued a number of releases like this one both on hybrid SACD's and on standard CD's (in other words, on separate discs). On SACD, there's a layer of the disc that an ordinary CD player can read and on a second layer is SACD material, multichannel surround and two-channel stereo that requires an SACD player to read. And, as I say, Telarc also offered a straight CD-only version of the recording for those listeners with no interest then, now, or ever in SACD.

I did my listening to this Orff disc from the two-channel stereo layer of the SACD, using a Sony SACD player. It sounded fine, almost as good as any of the Telarc SACD's I had listened to previously. It's true the Carmina Burana sounded a bit limp at first until I turned the volume up, but then it came to life reasonably well. The disc's extremely smooth response enables one to set the gain fairly high and still have the sonics come off sounding reasonably good. Unfortunately, I also found the sound rather flat, one-dimensional, in terms of stage depth, and, surprisingly, somewhat bass-shy, something that struck me even more forcibly when I compared it to Andre Previn's 1975 EMI recording of Carmina Burana with the London Symphony (remastered on an Hi-Q audiophile disc). Yes, the older EMI recording was a touch brighter and marginally more ragged at high volume, but because of its more realistic stage depth, it conveyed a better sense of the live experience for me. That was also the case with several other favorite Carmina Burana recordings I had on hand from Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony (Decca), Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra (Sony), and Eugen Jochum and the German Opera Orchestra (DG). All sounded better to me than the Telarc.

Donald Runnicles

As far as Donald Runnicles and his Atlanta Symphony performance is concerned, it's fairly exciting. However, by comparison I again preferred the interpretations listed above. As we might expect, Runnicles and his crew produce a solid reading of this lusty music, but a more flexible rubato in the other performances provided more variety in the proceedings, enlivening the merriness of the tavern drinking songs and, ironically, the courtly love tunes as well. By comparison to Previn, for example, Runnicles seemed to me more than a tad too polished, too sedate, and too matter-of-fact; and surely Orff, writing in 1936, intended these thirteenth-century snippets to be more robust and just a shade more, shall we say, vulgar? To my ears, the Previn, Blomstedt, Ormandy, and Jochum performances still offer a better balance of refinement and impropriety.

Anyway, none of this may be to the point, the actual reason for buying the disc being to listen to the sound of Carmina Burana from five speakers in a surround-sound system, plus a subwoofer, which, unfortunately, I never got to hear. That requires multichannel SACD, which, as I've said, I don't have. Maybe a reader with the appropriate playback equipment could render us a opinion on the disc's multichannel sound.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Orff: Carmina Burana (XRCD24 review)

Sheila Armstrong, Gerald English, Thomas Allen; Andre Previn, London Symphony Orchestra and St. Clement Danes Grammar School Boys’ Choir. Hi-Q Records HIQXRCD8.

I’m not a big fan of Orff's music, but audiences seem to love it and you hear it used in movies all the time. Recorded in 1974, this performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana by Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra remains one of the best. EMI reissued it at mid price in their “Great Recordings of the Century” line in 1998, then in their “Masters” series in 2010, and now Hi-Q Records give us a JVC XRCD24 K2 audiophile remaster in 2012.

For those few of you who may not be familiar with the work, Carl Orff (1895-1982) based Carmina Burana on the collected songs and poems of medieval minstrels. A booklet note tells us “Carmina Burana --‘Songs of Benedikbeuern’--was the title given to a thirteenth-century manuscript collection of songs (mostly in Latin) found in a monastery at Benedikbeuern in southern Bavaria in the 19th century, by J.A. Schmeller, when he published it in 1847. Orff came across the collection in 1935, and was immediately struck by it, particularly by the illumination of the Wheel of Fortune reproduced as a frontispiece, and conceived the idea of setting the songs to music.”

The assemblage of tunes contains several dozen short vocal pieces, plus orchestral accompaniment, grouped together in four sections. The music is vivid and vibrant, especially in Previn’s hands, and it speaks mainly of the yearnings and pleasures of the flesh. For example, “Sweet, rosey-hued mouth, Come and make me well.” Or “Love flies everywhere, He is seized by desire. Young men, young girls, Are rightly coupled together.” Or “The girl without a lover, Does without any pleasure.” Or “If a boy with a girl Tarries in a little room, Happy their mating.” And so on in its earthy way; I think you get the idea. Ably supported by a boys’ choir, the soloists have a field day with lyrics like these. Previn brings out the rustic joy of the music with an obvious love for it, almost reveling in the vulgarity.

There were two advantages of the 1998 and 2010 EMI discs over the company’s very first CD mastering: Superior sonics and a cheaper price. The 1998 audio quality (the same mastering repeated for the 2010 disc) was very slightly smoother and a touch fuller than the first CD transfer. Being over three-and-a-half decades old, the recording was analogue, of course, but the Abbey Road Technology (ART) remastering from 1998 removed some of the edge one may have noticed in the earlier full-priced CD; not all of it, but enough. Now, the sound is even better in Hi-Q’s audiophile remastering, and it makes Previn’s interpretation, full of love and lust and other sensual delights, an even greater delight.

EMI recorded the music in Kingsway Hall, London, in December of 1974, and the sonic quality was well up to EMI’s customary high standards of the day. Hi-Q use the JVC XRCD K2 disc processing system and had JVC remastered and manufacture the disc in Japan. The XRCD K2 system is a meticulous technique that begins with the analogue signal digitized directly into K2 24-bit, sent to JVC for playback via Digital K2 to eliminate jitter and distortion, converted using K2 Super Coding to 16 bit, and encoded using a DVD K2 laser with JVC’s Extended Pit Cutting Technology, the operation controlled by a K2 Rubidium Clock supposedly over 10,000 times more accurate than a conventional crystal clock. What all this means is that the process is about as precise and accurate as you can get in transferring an analogue tape signal to compact disc.

As usual, I put the Hi-Q disc into one CD player and the latest EMI issue into another, changing them out from time to time during my comparison to ensure I was listening to the discs and not the players. What I heard did not surprise me, although it was not a night-and-day difference, just a subtle improvement in the sound of the Hi-Q product. The EMI appeared a tad forward and bright, especially during the predominately vocal sections, while being a touch veiled, too. The Hi-Q was just that much clearer and more dynamic. Remember, the differences I heard were not the kind you might even notice except on direct A-B comparison. Impact, transients, and bass were also tauter on the Hi-Q, and highs sounded better extended.

This is not to suggest that because the Hi-Q disc further clarifies the sound that it makes it any less forward or bright; it’s just makes it a bit more open and transparent. Surprisingly, perhaps, the biggest improvements I noticed were in the quieter moments of the music, the wider dynamic range and greater lucidity of the Hi-Q product effecting a better low-level response.

If you already own one of the EMI Previn discs and like it well enough to think it warrants an upgrade in sonics, the Hi-Q release may be just the thing you’re looking for. Moreover, if you don’t already own the recording in any form, you might consider Hi-Q if you have a really super playback system and very deep pockets because the Hi-Q doesn’t come cheap.

The only other recordings I can think of that compare favorably with Previn’s are Blomstedt’s with the San Francisco Symphony (Decca), Ormandy’s with the Philadelphia Orchestra (Sony), and Jochum’s with the German Opera Orchestra (DG). Yet Previn has the definite advantage in sound if you go all the way with the Hi-Q remaster. Besides, Hi-Q Records package the disc in a very substantial and beautifully illustrated Digipak, with note pages fastened book-like inside. As always, it’s a first-class presentation.

JJP

Orff: Carmina Burana (CD review)

Sally Matthews, soprano; Lawrence Brownlee, tenor; Christian Gerhaher, baritone; Simon Rattle, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Berlin Radio Chorus. EMI 7243-5-57888-2.

Since moving to the conductorship of the Berlin Philharmonic some years ago, Sir Simon Rattle has been advocating live recording with a vengeance. I admit this often produces more lively and spontaneous results, having a real audience during the performance, but it doesn’t always do a lot for a recording’s sonics. Such is the case with Rattle’s release of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, that perennial favorite of music lovers the world over, as well as movie directors and television producers.

First, the performance. The soloists, chorus, and orchestra seem at first glance letter perfect, as we might expect from these people, and Rattle’s interpretation is vigorous, to say the least. The reading is, however, perhaps a touch too slick for its own good, lacking some of the earthiness the work might have found by its being slowed down a tad rather than taken at such extreme tempo changes. Rattle’s slowly and softly articulating one section of the music and then blasting it out fast and loud in the next can be exhilarating for a while but ultimately taxing on the mind and the ears. Nor do his singers always provide him the best support.

Created in 1937 and based on thirteenth-century manuscripts in Latin, French, and German, the Carmina Burana songs divide into three parts covering the pleasures of springtime, drinking, and love, all within the framework of “Fortuna,” luck or fate. Under Rattle, everything seems quite energetically pursued, but, as I say, those drastic changes of pace tend to undermine the whole enterprise.

The live sound, made in the Philharmonie, Berlin, in 2004 does not appear to me as convincing as most studio recordings, the way it’s miked making some instruments fade into the background or suddenly jump to the forefront. The solo voices come off best, very clear and natural in their presentation, but the orchestra fares more poorly. The sound, quite dynamic, is rather bright in the climaxes and fortissimos, somewhat muted at other times, and slightly thin overall. Frankly, despite the newer digital origins of the Rattle disc, I found it inferior to the older, analogue recordings of Andre Previn (EMI) and Eugen Jochum (DG), whose interpretations seem to me more refined, more robust, more consistent, and, yes, better recorded.

JJP

Orff: Carmina Burana Suite (CD review)

Also, Bird: Serenade; Reed: La Fiesta Mexicana. Harlan D. Parker, the Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble. Naxos 8.570242.

My first thought before listening to this disc was how the already rowdy Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1895-1982) would sound played by an all-wind band, the vocal parts revised for instruments (arranged for concert band by John Krance). I mean, Orff's twentieth-century updating of medieval songs normally requires a full orchestra, several choruses, and a host of soloists. Would a wind ensemble do it justice or just inflate its coarseness? I'm pleased to report that Harlan Parker and his seventy-odd Peabody Conservatory players do no harm to the piece and in most ways create a new and engaging rendition of an old favorite.

This is by way of saying that you'll recognize the music instantly and find each movement in the twenty-seven-minute suite revealing something you perhaps hadn't thought of before. The Peabody Wind Ensemble of John Hopkins University play with precision, if not with the complete zest and joy that I have heard from some major orchestras; in other words, they sound like they are maybe a little reticent about committing too much enthusiasm to a set of songs that requires a bit more earthiness. They are not stuffy, by any means, but they don't have the robust, unaffected air I find in, say, Previn's EMI recording, Blomstedt's Decca, or Jochum's DG.

Anyway, the Orff piece is just the most-familiar item on the disc; the album also contains a small-scale chamber work, Arthur Bird's Serenade for Wind Instruments (1898), which is quite charming, if forgettable; and Herbert Owen Reed's La Fiesta Mexicana (1954), a wonderfully varied and robust piece of music that has a little something in it for everybody, including a striking opening movement with trumpets and simulated fireworks.

It took a moment or two for me to adjust to the Naxos sound. At first, I thought it was a bit boisterous. A couple of minutes later, it seemed to fit the music. About halfway through the Orff, I realized it was not only appropriate, it was almost perfect. And by the beginning of Reed's La Fiesta, I thought it was downright spectacular. There is a picture of the ensemble in the booklet insert, and that's almost exactly what the sonic image sounds like: eight-to-ten players per row and about six rows deep, recorded at a modest distance. Depth of field is excellent; dynamics are strong; and clarity is more than acceptable. It's a topflight recording to complement a set of splendid performances.

JJP

Orff: Carmina Burana (CD review)

Sheila Armstrong, Gerald English, Thomas Allen; Andre Previn, St. Clement Danes Grammar School Boys' Choir and London Symphony Orchestra. EMI 50999 6 31802 2 0.

Recorded in 1974, this performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana by Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra remains one of my favorites. EMI reissued it at mid price in their "Great Recordings of the Century" line in 1998, and in 2010 it's back in their "Masters" series, as good as ever.

There are two advantages to this disc over EMI's very first CD mastering: Superior sonics and a cheaper price. The 1997 audio quality is very slightly smoother and a touch fuller than the transfer before it. Being over three-and-a-half decades old, it is an analogue recording, of course, but the Abbey Road Technology remastering removed some of the edge one may have noticed in the earlier full-priced CD; not all of it, but enough. None of the added warmth detracts from the earthiness of Previn's interpretation, though. It is still full of love and lust and other sensual delights.

For those few of you who may not be familiar with the work, Carl Orff published Carmina Burana in 1935 and based it on the collected songs and poems of thirteenth-century minstrels. There are several dozen short vocal pieces in the assemblage plus orchestral accompaniment, grouped together in four sections. The music is vivid and vibrant, especially in Previn's hands, and it speaks mainly of the yearnings and pleasures of the flesh.  For example, "Sweet, rosey-hued mouth, Come and make me well"; "Love flies everywhere, He is seized  by desire. Young men, young girls, Are rightly coupled together"; "The girl without a lover, Does without any pleasure"; "If a boy with a girl Tarries in a little room, Happy their mating." And so on in its earthy way; I think you get the idea. Ably supported by a boys' choir, the soloists have a field day with lyrics like these.

If you already own EMI's first, full-price CD, this new release may be enough of a sonic improvement to warrant a change; but if you own the "Great Recordings" remastering, you already have the identical copy of this one. The thing is, if you don't already own the recording in any form, you might consider now as good a time as any to invest in it. The only other recordings I can think of that compare with Previn's are Blomstedt's with the San Francisco Symphony (Decca), Ormandy's with the Philadelphia Orchestra (Sony), and Jochum's with the German Opera Orchestra (DG). Yet Previn has the edge in sound.

JJP