Somtow Sucharitkul conducts Carmina Burana. Photo courtesy of SOMTOW SUCHARITKUL
Prolific Somtow Sucharitkul likes things big. Witness his “Very Big Music Festival”, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand, and several other sumptuous productions that he has staged. As of now, he’s bringing the opera Dasjati to two European cities, and last month, he presented the 200-strong cast of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, a show certainly big in heart and soul.
Conducting the Siam Philharmonic Orchestra with his usual intensity, almost to the point of frenzy, Somtow produces bold and dramatic sounds with characteristic wit and jollity, worthy of Orff’s beloved masterpiece, often dubbed one of the glories of 20th century choral music.
Carmina Burana is a collection of medieval poems sung mostly in Latin. Here, both orchestra and choir deftly handled Orff’s constant rhythmic changes and caesura, tempo shifts and mixed meters, at exhilarating speed. The Slovak choir was dazzling in red, and the whole ensemble suitably luscious and resplendent in their vocals.
The combined effort of the Calliope Chamber Choir, Japanese Choir of Thailand, Immanuel Children’s Choir, Bangkok Music Society, Collegium Technicum of Slovakia and Siam Orpheus Choir created magnificent sonorities, oftentimes competing with the blazing brass and exuberant timpani, seamlessly transporting the audience through Orff’s three sections: In Spring (Primo vere), In the Tavern (In Taberna), and Court of Love (Cour d’amours).
The opening and closing tutti of Fortune, Empress of the World (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) were admirably performed, the layered crescendo rising up to portray the vagaries of life, dictated by the capricious, whimsical, and mercurial hand of fate. Rapturous praise is well-deserved.
Soprano Nancy Yuen’s dulcet tones are pleasant to the ear — melodious, bewitching and haunting. Her tender rendition of the inner conflict between chastity and desire is delicious and alluring. While baritone Kyu Won Han performed his part with gusto and appropriate emphasis, depicting the pleasures and perils of drunkenness, gluttony, addictive vice, and lust.
The adorable Immanuel Children’s Choir, mostly aged eight and nine, were simply delightful. They sang the a cappella section superbly, their effervescent voices filling the hall, clear and strong, even though there were only 11 of them.
Orff’s composition uses a selection of medieval drinking songs and verses about love, nature, excessive abandon and fate, written by Benedictine monks in the 13th century. Much of it is bawdy and boisterous, but to focus on the lust and debauchery may perhaps miss the intent of this composition. In the midst of carnal desires and pagan sensuality, there is romance and celebration and campestral beauty. Explicit love songs alternate with anguished meditations on mortality. Dreams of connubial felicity are punctuated with rejection and pining for lost love.
Reading the poems by themselves, one cannot help but feel that this is the work of gifted poets. Even if they called themselves “goliards” — defrocked monks and minstrels — there is a strong degree of spirituality in their work. The immoderate tone has led them to be called irreligious, and it may be so if religion is limited to the worship of a deified supreme omnipotent being (or a set of powerful beings), which the poets actually do not mention (at least in the selections that Orff used). Upon reflection, in spite of the barbaric and hedonistic tone, it is clear that the dominant and recurring theme and common thread is the fickleness of fate and the ephemeral nature of life. The music, dotted by rhythmic pungency, fits this interpretation.
In the tavern, everyone drinks, no matter what their state or station in life. This is emphatically drilled into the repetitive score and lyrics, and may reflect a conviction that human beings, with their foibles and failings, are not dissimilar. The wailing, roasting swan amid the revelry is also a wrenching reminder of the close connection between death and dinner.
The see-saw juxtaposition of pain and pleasure, as well as heartbreak and abandonment in the midst of burgeoning flowers, emphasises the fact that the grim hand of fate is ever-present and nothing is permanent. We feel the Fortuna Wheel turning within each scene, and sometimes even within a single movement, turning joy to grief, hope to despair. And then the cycle starts again with each new beginning. The parallel to the Buddhist wheel is hard to ignore.
Impermanence is in fact one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism — that all existence is transient and evanescent. Whether tangible or intangible, all aspects of existence are in a continuous state of change, subject inexorably to deterioration and destruction. Nothing lasts and everything decays. And since nothing is permanent, desires or attachments only cause suffering.
Viewed in this light, Carmina Burana has more in common with Buddhist teachings than meets the eye. It therefore fits quite snugly into Somtow Sucharitkul’s grand scheme, spearheaded by the magnificent Dasjati project, which creates a ballet-opera about the Ten Lives of Buddha.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.