Bearsden Choir: Carmina Burana
City Halls, Glasgow, 30/11/25
Bearsden Choir, NYCoS Stirling Choir, Lynda Cochrane & Judith Keaney (pianos); RCS Percussion Ensemble; Andrew Nunn (director), Rachel Munro (soprano), Joseph Doody (tenor), Phil Gault (baritone)
The 1970s were my teen years and I cannot be the only person whose first encounter with Carl Orff’s life-affirming cantata ‘Carmina Burana’ was an advertisement for ‘Old Spice’ men’s fragrance, in which a rugged male surfer rides the ‘tube’ of a tempestuous rolling wave towards an attractive, admiring, scantily clad, panting woman on the shore. ‘Subtlety’, the reader may readily imagine, is a characteristic infrequently associated with the 70s. I tell not a word of a lie when I say I was impervious to the preposterous claims of the advertising industry, but the music: that was a different matter. It wowed me. The visuals had me assuming that I was hearing an orgiastic (if not orgasmic) excerpt from a pretty wild opera. When I heard that the piece was called ‘Carmina Burana’, I honestly first thought that that was a girl’s name and that she was clearly a bit of a ‘goer’. Although I had begun learning Latin in 1973, it was a while before the penny dropped. It was 1982 before I bought an LP of the work and finally understood it. I’ve been a fan ever since. So the 150-strong Bearsden Choir’s first concert of their 2025-26 season in Glasgow’s City Halls on 30th November was unmissable. A version of the Carmina where the instrumentation was 2 pianos plus an array of percussion occupied the larger second half of the programme. Children’s voices were provided by the NYCoS Stirling Regional Choir. Pianists Lynda Cochrane and Judith Keaney delivered the bulk of the melodic orchestral reduction. An ensemble of 6 percussion students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland provided the rest of the instrumental texture. Solo vocals were sung by soprano Rachel Munro, tenor Joseph Doody and baritone Phil Gault. Bearsden Choir’s Music Director Andrew Nunn conducted. The shorter first half of the concert featured cameo performances by the Bearsden Choir, a duet of percussionists from the RCS, and the NYCOS Stirling Choir, with pieces by Kerry Andrew, Arvo Pärt and Rolf Wallin. Attendance was very satisfactory.
The concert opened with English composer Kerry Andrew’s ‘O Nata Lux’, the first of 12 ‘Dusksongs’ written for The Ebor Singers in 2007. Ethereal atmospheric solo lines grow to a prayerful full choir sound, with a harmonic texture like modern quasi-organum. Conductor Andrew Nunn introduced the next two pieces, starting with Arvo Pärt’s ‘Magnificat’, a piece typical of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabuli’ style, where slow-moving held notes in one line are ornamented by their harmonics arpeggiated in the other lines, evoking the sound of bellringing. Exquisite stillness alternates with swelling dynamics to a big sound. It is a challenging sing and there was a slight pitch drop in the sopranos on first returning to meditative stillness. This did not mar the simplicity, clarity and directness of the transparent texture, however, which was quite magical. The set concluded with a return to Andrew, with their 2011 piece ‘The Earth Hath Voice’, for which the choir was joined by pianist Lynda Cochrane and 2 percussionists from the RCS (Lauren Northorpe and Lewis Russell). Vocal imitation of the sounds of nature and the elements abounds, but there is much more, including rhythmic sprechgesang on keywords (such as ‘shore’ and ‘light’) and some quite complex polyphony. Notwithstanding the unignorable ecological message, the mood of the piece is optimistic and uplifting and it received compelling advocacy.
For Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin’s ‘Frap’, two more percussionists from the RCS (Catriona Duncan and Matthew Rankin) faced each other with two matching kits of untuned percussion (with drums, cowbells, woodblocks and metal bars but no cymbals) and went at it hammer-and-tongs in a display of rhythmic virtuosity (part duet; part duel). Thrilling.
The first half concluded with a set of 3 songs from the NYCoS youngsters, introduced by their conductor Mark Evans and accompanied by Judith Keaney on the piano. First up, ‘From a Railway Carriage’ a setting of Robert Louis Stevenson, featured a briskly ornate and rhythmic piano ‘engine’, as the gleeful text evokes images of the scenery flashing past, with super diction from the young choristers. The tranquil tenderness of the traditional Welsh lullaby ‘Suo Gân’ provided a sweet contrast in an arrangement by the NYCoS Stirling accompanist Stuart Hope (with what is often called the American version of the lyrics, in which the only Welsh is the title repeated hypnotically at the beginning of each line). The set concluded with ‘Make a song for my heart to sing’ by Julie Knowles, simple, cheerful and charming with just a touch of two-part counterpoint and undiminished quality of diction. Delightful.
Scoring reductions bring gains and losses. Typically, the gains include enhanced transparency of textural detail and reduced obscuring of vocalists’ diction. Inevitably (at least in my experience), the losses almost always involve the absence of some brass instruments and, to a lesser extent, key winds at crucial moments. I was pleasantly surprised that the instances of such losses were relatively rare. The timpani and 150 voices ensured that the declamatory opening of ‘O Fortuna’ (of Old Spice fame) lacked none of its customary thrill. The two pianos honoured the stealthy inexorable march of fate, as in the original, while the addition of bass drum, tam-tam and 1 Glockenspiel (there are 3 in the original) ensured that the concluding peroration at the end of the number did not lack an ounce of oomph. It was not until the admonitory orchestral ritornelli at the ends of the 3 verses of the second number, ‘Fortune plango vulnera’ (I lament the wounds dealt by Fate), that I really missed the winds and brass. But, amazingly, not once again in the choral numbers or the solos did I feel their absence. ‘Ecce gratum’ (Behold the most pleasing thing) shone. ‘Floret silva nobilis’ (The noble forest blooms) was gorgeous. ‘Chramer, gib die varwe mir’ (Merchant, give me some makeup – in Old High German) was delightful. ‘In taberna quando sumus’ (When we’re in the pub) was riotous. ‘Si puer cum puellula’ (If a lad and a lassie) for a handful of voices was raunchily suggestive; ‘Veni, veni, venias’ (Come, come, o please come) was breathless with desire. ‘Ave formosissima’ (Haol, dishiest one) was radiant with its praise of feminine beauty. The reprise of ‘O fortuna’ reminded us that Fate still holds all the cards.
Welsh-Irish baritone Phil Gault, on whose always characterful guest appearances, specifically with City of Glasgow Chorus (Haydn’s ‘Creation’ in June and Bach’s ‘Magnificat’ in March 2024), and Garleton Singers (Puccini’s ‘Messa’ back in March this year), it has been my pleasure to report, delivered again with the same rich warm tone and flawless shaping of note and phrase. Orff is generous with goodies for the baritone. The gentle stirrings of spring in ‘Omnia sol temperat’ (The sun warms everything); ‘Estuans interius’ (Seething inside) – the confessions of a rakish libertine poet in the tavern, and ‘Ego sum abbas’ (I am the abbot) – the confessions of a drunken gambling monk, cut a picaresque Bruegelian portrait, cursed by the chorus, giving a nod to Orff’s original vision for the cantata as a semi-staged theatrical entertainment. In the penultimate section, ‘Cour d’Amours’ (The Court of Love), the baritone is the lover of the soprano, with ‘Dies, nox et omnia’ (Day, night and everything – feeling the sting of Cupid’s dart), ‘Circa mea pectora’ (In my heart – yep, direct hit, desire inflamed, teased by the chorus), and finally, egged on by the choir in ‘Tempus est iocundum’ (This is the time for making whoopee – my tongue-in-cheek translation), his shyness melts as her sweet cadenza lights the way to consummation. Excellent.
By contrast, the tenor has only one number, but it’s a corker. For ‘Olim lacus colueram’ (I once plied the lakes – the bitter tale of a once proud elegant swan being spit-roasted for a feast) Joseph Doody arrived on the stage like a rabbit caught in the headlights, startled by the choir and terrified at the sight of the audience. The choir responded like Job’s Comforters to his misery. At the end of the number, denied a scintilla of empathy, he scarpered in a blue funk. This was my first time seeing English tenor Joseph Doody and he gets a massive thumbs-up. Superb.
In June 2023, I attended, enjoyed and reviewed the Byre Opera production of Dove’s ‘Mansfield Park’ in the Laidlaw Music Centre in St Andrews. I was blown away by a stunning coloratura soprano in the role of Mary Crawford. That soprano was fellow-mathematician Rachel Munro, and she had already been working in a graduate position at the Laidlaw Music Centre and for Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as leading Craigmillar Voices community choir as part of the SCO’s outreach residency programme. She was set to join the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland post-graduate Vocal Performance programme in September that year. I resolved to watch for opportunities to track her emergent career. I waited patiently (mostly) and in May this year my patience was rewarded by catching her in Opera Bohemia’s production of ‘Suor Angelica’ at the Perth Festival, in the minor role of Lay Sister. I was therefore delighted to see her name on the programme for ‘Carmina Burana’.
The solo soprano is the young woman in the ‘Cour d’Amours’ section, the object of the baritone’s affections. In ‘Amor volat undique’ (Love flies everywhere), the children’s voices sing tenderly of Cupid’s mission, while the soprano feels the sting of his dart (with just a touch of FOMO – Fear of Missing Out). ‘Stetit puella’ (A girl stood) paints a picture of a dishy girl in a red dress, Rachel was in a green dress, but hey (eia …), who cares? Dishy is dishy. The idyllically sweet simple melody of ‘In trutina’ (On the scales) shows her weighing up the dilemma: chastity or wanton passion. No contest. Cupid wins. Her brief tender cadenza, ‘Dulcissime’ (O sweetest boy) leaves us in no doubt..
This concert was the day after the death of the playwright Tom Stoppard and I was musing about his masterpiece ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ even as I was musing over the message of ‘Carmina Burana’. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don’t realise that they are characters in a Shakespeare play whose script is already written and they are doomed. Their continued survival seems as random and inexplicable as the flip of a coin. Even the title contains a contradiction in the last two words (‘are’ = they exist; ‘dead’ = they don’t). The fundamental absurdity of life and language and the absence of meaning where everything is a contradiction weighs heavily. Yet, as long as they survive, they are winning the game whose rules remain hidden to them. In the Carmina, Fate holds all the cards in a game whose rules it makes up on the fly. Planning a future is folly and delusion. But there is joy and beauty and love in the world and we can experience it all if we dare, even as precarity hovers in the wings. Funny how a 20th century playwright teasing out an extra layer of meaning from Shakespeare, and a 20th century composer, captivated by the beauty of a codex of 11th to 13th century poems in Latin, Old French and Old High German in a Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Bavaria, came to similar surreal world views. I’ll dedicate this review to the memory of Tom Stoppard.
And to the choristers young and older, soloists, instrumentalists and conductor who made Orff’s surreal vision real: well done, you caught it perfectly. Fullest plaudits from me to add to those of the audience on the night.