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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Burana’ blasts off


Christopher Pfund
 (The Spokesman-Review)
Travis Rivers Correspondent

Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” got its start in the quiet library of a medieval monastery in the foothills of Bavaria. But “quiet” will not be the operative word when the work explodes onto the stage of the INB Performing Arts Center on Friday.

Music Director Eckart Preu will conduct the Spokane Symphony, a chorus of more than 200 voices, and soloists Dawn Marie Wolksi, Christopher Pfund and Hugh Russell in Orff’s huge cantata.

The program will also include Felix Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony.

Orff completed “Carmina Burana” in 1936, and ever since its premiere in Frankfurt the following summer it has remained near the top of the chorale-orchestral hit parade. Michael Steinberg, former critic for the Boston Globe, called it “one of the few box-office certainties of the 20th century.”

The text of “Carmina Burana” is taken from a collection of 13th-century poems about springtime, sex and love, drinking and gambling, written by renegade priests and monks.

The poems are mostly in vernacular Latin with some in Middle High German, and others in Old French – sometimes a mixture of all three. Why they were collected into a single manuscript volume, and how they found their way into the monastery library at Benediktbeuern, near Munich, is an unsolved mystery.

Inspired by Stravinsky’s success setting the Latin texts of “Oedipus Rex” and the Symphony of Psalms to music, Orff encountered “Carmina Burana” in a transcription of the original poems published in 1847. Orff’s long Latin subtitle reads: “Secular songs for soloists and chorus accompanied by instruments and magic tableaux.”

Preu has elected to forgo the “magic tableaux,” which usually means dancing or mime. (Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle is staging a ballet version this week, with performances through Sunday.)

Nonetheless, there will be 341 performers on stage Friday, including the symphony and Symphony Chorale augmented by choirs from Washington State University, Eastern Washington University, Spokane Falls Community College and the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus.

The featured soloists will be soprano Dawn Marie Wolski, tenor Christopher Pfund and baritone Hugh Russell.

Wolksi was born in Washington, D.C., and received her master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music. She toured as soloist with the U.S. Army Field Band of Washington in 40 states, and has been featured in operatic roles ranging from Britten’s “Rape of Lucretia” to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado.”

She lives in New York with her husband, violinist Mateusz Wolski, the recently named concertmaster of the Spokane Symphony.

Pfund, born in Colorado and also holder of a master’s degree from the Manhattan School, recently performed “Carmina Burana” with the Jacksonville Symphony and will sing the work with the Hartford (Conn.) Symphony and the Windsor Symphony in Ontario.

He has sung operatic roles by City Opera in New York, the Glimmerglass Festival Opera and Santa Fe Opera, and has recorded for the Vox and Newport Classics labels.

Russell is a Canadian baritone who received his master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. He was a Kurt Hermann Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera and sang in the company’s U.S. premiere of Messiaen’s “St. Francois d’Assise.”

He has also sung with the Los Angles Opera Pittsburgh Opera and the City Opera in New York, and will appear in orchestral engagements with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Toronto Symphony and in “Carmina Burana” with the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans.

Preu has paired the immensely popular “Carmina Burana” with Mendelssohn’s least frequently performed symphony, his “Reformation” Symphony, written when the composer was 20 years old.

The work was composed as part of the 300th anniversary festivities celebrating the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, a statement of the Lutheran position, to Emperor Charles V in 1530.

For reasons that are not clear today, Mendelssohn’s symphony was not performed at the 1830 Reformation celebrations in Berlin, and when it was performed there two years later, it did not enjoy the success he had hoped for. The composer thought of the symphony as unlucky, and the work was not published until after his death.

Preu will join host Verne Windham at Classical Chats, the symphony’s pre-performance conversation, today at 12:15 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall. The 30-minute program will be televised on City Cable Channel 5.

He will also discuss the music on the program as a part of the Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Talks series in the INB-PAC auditorium on Friday at 7 p.m.