ConcertPulse
Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Chor Hamburg / Symphoniker Hamburg / Hansjörg Albrecht
Laeiszhalle, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
»Could you give your orchestra a little longing for spring when you play it, because I had that with me when I wrote it. I would like the very first trumpet blast to sound as if from on high, like a call to awakening,« wrote Robert Schumann to the conductor Wilhelm Taubert about his First Symphony in B flat major, of which he once proudly proclaimed: »It was born in a fiery hour.« It was written in a true creative frenzy: the 31-year-old composer sketched it in just four days at the end of January 1841 and finished the entire score a good three weeks later, on 20 February. This early spring symphony by Robert Schumann forms the opening of this intoxicating evening, the second half of which features the famous Carmina Burana. Carl Orff became famous overnight in 1937 with the large-scale Carmina Burana. Contemporary harmonies and expressive melodies are combined here with elements of medieval music, powerful rhythms and an artful simplicity. Orff composed this work to Latin, Middle and Old High German songs that were found in 1803 in the Benediktbeuren monastery in Bavaria and are today among the most important literary testimonies of the Middle Ages. In three parts, the songs of Carmina Burana tell of love and courtship, of romance and mysticism, but above all of the cycle of life. To this day, the work is one of the most popular pieces of serious music of the 20th century.