‘Carmina’s’ Eros Dissipates in Night Air

Ottorino Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome” typically ends a concert. After all, who wants to hear another piece of music after the rousing portrait of Imperial Legions marching out to conquer the known world?

The powers at the Hollywood Bowl, however, came up with something for Tuesday: Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” a work created in 1937 in Munich, when another war machine was preparing to launch its own attempt at world conquest.

Carlo Rizzi calmed the martial overtones when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale and Children’s Chorus and three powerhouse soloists in a muscular and clear performance that often teetered on the edge of boredom and occasionally tipped over.

When it did, it was always for the same reason. The chorus was singing words with great clarity but without much regard to their sense. Latin may be a dead language, but it is still a language. The same is true for middle high German. The Latin and German texts of “Carmina”--which, after all, means “songs”--are poems, often erotic and earthy poems.

The only thing that keeps Orff’s repetitive music from sounding stuck in a rut is due attention to what the texts are saying. Perhaps this is too much to expect from a 115-voice choir, especially at full volume. But not all of “Carmina” is at that peak. And it’s not as if this music is unfamiliar.

Interpreting text was not a problem with the three soloists. Rodney Gilfry sang with a vibrant, honeyed and virile baritone. Soprano Ruth Ann Swenson sang with dark-toned brilliance and caressing sweetness. Tenor Richard Clement ascended to the strangulating heights with rare ease and power. For once, the tenor sounded less tortured than the roasted cygnet he impersonates in one song.

“Carmina” is extremely popular these days, heard in movies and commercials. Still, how many people, other than music critics and singers, have memorized it? It would be nice to have the texts in the program booklet.

Rizzi conducted “Pines” with judicious control and sensitivity, especially in the quieter movements. The nighttime pines emerged as a lovely landscape, marred only by misjudged amplification that suddenly introduced a 200-pound nightingale. Clarinetist Michele Zukovsky and (offstage) trumpeter Donald Green played haunting solos.

The program opened with a curious and intriguing rarity--Luciano Berio’s 1975 transcription for orchestra of Boccherini’s “La ritirata notturna di Madrid” (The Nighttime Retreat From Madrid). The 10-minute work began as a 1797 string quintet. It is frankly programmatic in describing the approach and retreat of an army.

Berio reshaped it slightly, retained its 18th century sound and style of variation, and kept its near-fatuous fixation on a single key. He did introduce just the slightest amount of modern nervous tics and awareness. The result is loony and infectious.