By Daniel Buckwalter
From the legends of dancing witches and devils to a 25-movement cantata that celebrates poetry reflecting love, women and drinking — as well as the cruelty of fate — the Eugene Concert Choir shared an energizing end to its season with a deeply appreciative audience.
Carmina Burana & Walpurgis Night capped the choir’s 49th season of touring the world with vignettes from the Americas, France, England and Asia. This time the choir sang with vigor two major and ancient German choral works.
Under the direction of Diane Retallack and joined by the Eugene Concert Orchestra, the choir — with soloists and the Young Voices choir — brought the audience at Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall on April 28 to its feet with rousing performances of Felix Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night) and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.
It was a stirring end to the season, and the choir jumped right into it with the Mendelssohn piece. After the overture (Bad Weather), guest tenor Esteban Zúñiga Calderón stepped up and delivered a passionate Transition to Spring.
Calderón’s first solo was the first of several by guest soloists throughout the afternoon and offered additional beauty to the concert. The other guest soloists were baritone Phillip Bullock, contralto Laura Beckek Thoreson and soprano Alexandria Crichlow, who was especially effective near the end of Carmina Burana with the Young Voices.
Carmina Burana is a lengthy piece, to be sure, and it helps to carefully follow along using the program if you’re not intimately familiar with the work. The 25-movement piece is based on 24 Medieval poems copied and collected by monks at a monastery in the Bavarian Alps and published by Andreas Schmeller (Songs of Beuern) in the 19th century.
But they are hardly sacred scriptures. Instead, they are secular poems that were sung by university students, street musicians, or defrocked monks, and they cover life in taverns, mythical women and the seasons.
And they are a pleasure to absorb. Carmina Burana moves fast, and the 25 movements are bracketed by the well-known O Fortuna chorus in which the choir is at its full-throated best.
Carmina Burana & Walpurgis Night was a wonderful way to end the Eugene Concert Choir’s 49th season, and now we can look forward to their golden anniversary.
