Carmina Burana. BBC Concert Orchestra. Choirs from Nottingham’s Universities and Southwell Minster. Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham. 04 December 2024,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Ruff.

The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm on Tuesday 10 December 2024.

“Plenty of tingle-factor in this fruitful musical collaboration.”

This performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana set the pulse racing before even a note of it was heard.  The massed choirs of the University and Nottingham Trent University plus choristers from Southwell Minster were quite a sight to behold.  And the orchestra that Orff uses doesn’t exactly err on the side of economy: two pianos, a vast array of brass and just about every percussion instrument you can think of – plus the more normal strings and woodwind.  This stage picture was a snapshot of what is clearly a very fruitful collaboration between Nottingham’s two universities and the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Carmina Burana is a piece which cries out to be heard live and performed by a huge choir.  It’s hard to think of anything else in the whole classical repertoire which grabs the audience so fiercely by the throat at the outset and injects so much tingle factor into the vital organs. 

If the ghost of Carl Orff had been hovering over the Royal Concert Hall, it would surely have been smiling to see so many young singers in the choir stalls.  Carmina Burana is a work which celebrates youth, its texts drawn from a medieval manuscript of earthy poems, dating from a time when life was short and had to be savoured before death raised its unpredictable head.  We hear about fickle Fortune; revel in springtime and its awakening of desire; go dancing on the village green.  We go drinking in the tavern, become courtiers in the palace of Love – and finally succumb to the inevitable and overwhelming power of Fortune.

Conductor George Jackson drew compelling performances from the huge choral forces.  The opening ‘O Fortuna’ demonstrated just how extreme Carmina Burana is.  You could feel the opening bars vibrating your rib cage – but when the music becomes hardly more than a sinister whisper there was no diminution in energy.  Crisp diction was also a feature throughout.  There was much lovely singing from the semi-chorus in more lyrical, contemplative numbers as well as a palpable sense of exultation when the whole choir gloried in the physicality of Love.  The ‘Ave formosissima’ hymn to Venus at the end launched the return of ‘O Fortuna’ with shattering effect.

Carl Orff gives his three soloists almost impossible things to do.  Soprano Fflur Wyn sang movingly about love and wasn’t daunted by the stratospheric top notes of ‘Dulcissime’.  Tenor Levy Sekgapane was as convincing in his role of a roasted swan as anybody reasonably could be.  Baritone Morgan Pearse had mixed fortunes: vividly in character as the drunken Abbot, for instance, but sounding less comfortable in the falsetto moments and when pitted against the power of the full orchestra.

In the concert’s first half there were two short pieces.  Jenni Brandon’s Tonight a Stolen Moment is a moving depiction of an immigrant family arriving in a big, bewildering new city, having left their luxuries and memories behind.  The NTU Choir probed to the heart of the piece, conveying the way fear and anguish are transformed into hope – although diction and tuning were occasionally problematic.

The University of Nottingham Choir sang Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine in a performance whose vivid word-painting allowed the audience to feel the wonder of Leonardo’s vision, see his drawn images, hear and feel the scratching quill on crumpled paper, hear the bell tolling and finally to experience with the dreaming Leonardo his leap into flight.  Extraordinary.

Fflur Wyn                    soprano
Levy Sekgapane         tenor
Morgan Pearse           baritone
Choirs of the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University
Choristers of Southwell Minster

George Jackson conductor, Rachel Parkes choral director, Matthew Hopkins choral director