Your cart has expired remaining to complete your purchase
Event is Live
Carnegie Hall Presents

Carmina Burana

Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Tuesday, February 27, 2024 8 PM Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Westminster Symphonic Choir by Steve J. Sherman
With its enormous popularity matched by the huge number of musicians required to perform it, a Carmina Burana concert is always a major event and season highlight. Featuring some of the most recognizable music ever written in its opening and closing minutes, Carmina Burana is a thoroughly propulsive and sometimes explosive work that remains surprisingly approachable throughout. It returns to Carnegie Hall, courtesy of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Westminster Symphonic Choir, Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and several exceptional soloists.

Part of: Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice

Performers

Orchestra of St. Luke's
Tito Muñoz, Conductor
Ying Fang, Soprano
Nicholas Phan, Tenor
Norman Garrett, Baritone
Westminster Symphonic Choir
James Jordan, Director
Young People's Chorus of New York City
Francisco J. Núñez, Artistic Director

Program

ORFF Carmina Burana

Event Duration

The program will last approximately 75 minutes with no intermission. Please note that there will be no late seating. 
Bank of America
This performance is sponsored by Bank of America.
Support for the Fall of the Weimar Republic festival is provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Hearst Foundations.

This Concert in Context

By the time Carl Orff completed Carmina Burana in 1936, the Nazi regime was firmly in power in Germany. At its premiere in June 1937, Carmina Burana was met with wild applause despite the misgivings of some Nazi musicologists, who decried the work as a “mistaken return to primitive elements of instrumentalism and a foreign emphasis on rhythmic formulae.” However, the public’s broader approval—coupled with the regime’s desperate desire to retain artists of international standing following the flight of Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, and countless other Jewish-German composers—compelled Nazi cultural leaders to accept Orff as a suitably “Aryan” composer. Although Orff himself never joined the Nazi Party, he proved a willing collaborator with the regime when it suited his own purposes. Following the success of Carmina Burana, for example, the mayor of Frankfurt approached Orff about the possibility of composing a suitably “Aryanized” version of Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While other Nazi-approved composers such as Hans Pfitzner and Werner Egk had resisted such overtures earlier in 1934, Orff gratefully accepted the commission, with the rewritten version performed in Frankfurt in 1939. Next to Richard Strauss, Orff was easily the most famous composer who would stay on in Nazi Germany through the end of World War II. He was ultimately classified as “Grey C, acceptable” by “denazification” authorities—a category reserved for individuals “compromised by their actions during the Nazi period but not subscribers to Nazi doctrine”—and subsequently released.

—Brendan Fay, author of Classical Music in Weimar Germany

Bios

Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) performs and produces in a variety of formats throughout New York City, including orchestra and chamber music series on each of Carnegie Hall’s ...

Read More

Tito Muñoz

Now in his 10th season as the Virginia G. Piper Music Director of The Phoenix Symphony, Tito Muñoz previously served as music director of the Opéra national de Lorraine and ...

Read More

Ying Fang

Chinese soprano Ying Fang has been praised as “indispensable at the Met in Mozart” (The New York Times) and for “a voice that can stop time, pure and rich and open and ...

Read More

Nicholas Phan

Described by the Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” American tenor Nicholas Phan is increasingly recognized as an artist of distinction with an ...

Read More

Norman Garrett

American baritone Norman Garrett, who has been called “scene-stealing” by The New York Times, is enjoying a varied and exciting career. In the 2023–2024 season, he makes ...

Read More

Westminster Symphonic Choir

Led by James Jordan and Associate Director Tyler Weakland, Westminster Symphonic Choir is one of five renowned ensembles of Westminster Choir College of Rider University. The choir is ...

Read More

Stay Up to Date