MUSIC

The Heritage Chorale’s 75th Anniversary Season concludes with a performance of Carl Orff’s ever-popular Carmina Burana. Particularly appropriate for this anniversary season of the Heritage Chorale, Carmina Burana was premiered 75 years ago (on June 8, 1937), in the same year that the chorus was founded. The source of Orff’s texts for Carmina Burana was an impressive medieval manuscript, a collection of over 250 poems including love songs, drinking songs, clerical jests, and satirical moral poems. Orff became acquainted with the manuscript in 1934, and was immediately seized with the desire to bring it to life through music. Orff’s musical setting is filled with powerful driving rhythms, which create an atmosphere of wild abandon and physical exuberance, matching the often-ribald character of the vivid and colorful medieval poetry. The powerful and exciting opening chorus, O Fortuna, has been heard in many movie soundtracks and two television commercials and is familiar to many. Conducted by John Finney, Carmina Burana will be performed in the version accompanied by professional soloists, two pianists and six percussionists, and will also feature members of the Handel and Haydn Society Youth Chorus (Heather Tryon, conductor).