Carmina Burana with Barts Choir at Royal Festival Hall, London on Wednesday 21st May 2025

Please note: This concert is in the past and has already taken place.

Carmina Burana with Barts Choir

Add to my Calendar 21-05-2025 19:30 21-05-2025 21:30 36 Carmina Burana with Barts Choir Barts Choir presents three 20th-century classics. Carl Orff’s most popular work was inspired by the composer’s discovery of a collection of medieval songs in Latin and Old German. As he wrote later, ‘The goddess Fortuna must have been smiling on me when, as if by chance, she put a copy of a catalogue in my hands’. That catalogue contained the Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuren) texts. Setting these revolutionised Orff’s own musical style, with simple tunes, driving rhythms, repeated bass figures and brilliant and percussive orchestrations, which influenced much later music, particularly for film and television. The concert opens with Toward the Unknown Region, setting words by Vaughan Williams’ favourite poet, Walt Whitman, and concluding triumphantly with a blaze of choral and instrumental sound. This is followed by his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, where the composer takes the original Tudor hymn tune and transforms it into music of transcendent beauty and power Royal Festival Hall, London DD/MM/YYYY

Details

Royal Festival Hall
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd
South Bank
London
SE1 8XX
England

Wednesday 21st May 2025
7:30 PM

Programme

Carl Orff – Carmina Burana
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Toward the Unknown region

Performers

Elizabeth Findon – soprano
James Hall – countertenor
Julien Van Mellaerts – baritone
Ivor Setterfield – Conductor

Barts Choir
Trafalgar Sinfonia
Dulwich Prep & Senior Children's Choir

Programme Note

Barts Choir presents three 20th-century classics.

Carl Orff’s most popular work was inspired by the composer’s discovery of a collection of medieval songs in Latin and Old German.

As he wrote later, ‘The goddess Fortuna must have been smiling on me when, as if by chance, she put a copy of a catalogue in my hands’. That catalogue contained the Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuren) texts.

Setting these revolutionised Orff’s own musical style, with simple tunes, driving rhythms, repeated bass figures and brilliant and percussive orchestrations, which influenced much later music, particularly for film and television.

The concert opens with Toward the Unknown Region, setting words by Vaughan Williams’ favourite poet, Walt Whitman, and concluding triumphantly with a blaze of choral and instrumental sound.

This is followed by his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, where the composer takes the original Tudor hymn tune and transforms it into music of transcendent beauty and power

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