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BRITT CLASSICAL FESTIVAL Review: Britt kicks off classical season with boffo modernist program Comment By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Aug. 1, 2015 at 12:01 AM By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Aug. 1, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News Teddy Abrams and the Britt Orchestra kicked off Britt’s 2015 Classical Festival — as they did last year — with one of Abrams’ own compositions, this time a bouncy number called “Kentucky Royal Fanfare.” Abrams, the summer festival’s music director and conductor, premiered the piece in March in his day job as music director and conductor of the Louisville Orchestra. The occasion was a visit by England’s Prince Charles. The odd-time fanfare slyly defied one’s sense of where the beats would normally fall. The program quickly became more ambitious. Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s 1908 “The Poem of Ecstasy” is an exploration of what its composer saw as the creative energy of the universe. Scriabin was a believer in Theosophy and had esoteric theories about music. The “Poem” ignores traditional symphonic movements. It began with the woodwinds and strings and was dominated by catchy themes and colors derived from the “mystic chord,” a synthetic chord Scriabin once described as revealing a “gnostic intimation of a hidden otherness.” As the orchestra played harmonies derived from the chord’s scales, the result was short on melody but long on drama and suspense. The performance moved deftly from slower passages to an uptempo section of quick turns. After an early climax, the brass introduced new themes, and the piece built to a final, tremendous climax. But the night belonged to a monumental performance of that stalwart of the repertoire, “Carmina Burana,” German composer Carl Orff’s 1936 composition based on a cycle of poems from the Middle Ages. Abrams and the orchestra were joined by the Southern Oregon Repertory Singers, the Rogue Valley Chorale and members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, resulting in a monster choir of 150 voices. Written in Latin, the often bawdy poems are about the uncertainty of life, the joys of springtime and all-too-human excesses of drinking, feasting, gambling and sex. At bottom they are about the medieval obsession with the wheel of fortune. The familiar “O Fortuna” segment came out of the gate with the choral part soaring above a roar of percussion. The crescendo of the drums gave way to short melodies from the strings and horns and a powerful climax. The orchestra and chorus joined powerfully in the spare “Ecce Gratum.” “Carmina Burana” is marked by its constantly changing rhythms, its melodic fragments and the range of its poems. A drinking song found baritone Hugh Russell singing, “My soul is dead / So I look after the flesh.” A swan is roasted on a spit as a bassoon plays a sad solo. There is drunken merriment. The final section is an interpretation of courtly and erotic love culminating in the chorus’s hyperbolic praise of a beautiful woman, followed by the climactic return of the “O Fortuna” theme. The music and had a certain glittery quality, and the singing ranged from impressive to stellar, particularly that of guest soprano Celena Shafer, baritone Russell and tenor Javier Abreu. Several of the later songs found Shafer and Russell acting out lyrics, which didn’t enhance one’s experience of the music. Orff intended the work to be presented with dance and other on-stage actions in line with his theory of “Theatrum Mundi,” a union of music, movement and speech. Absent any of that, this was still an epic performance of an idiosyncratic, spectacular work. Reach freelance writer Bill Varble at [email protected]. By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Aug. 1, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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