“It made a tremendous impression on me musically,” says Ramadanoff, who will conduct Orff’s pulsing 1936 crowd-pleaser on April 25 with the Vallejo Symphony. “The rhythms capture you instantly. The music is relentless and hypnotic.” The maestro, who has shaped the symphony over the last quarter century, will lead a 65-piece orchestra; extra musicians have been hired to play the score, which calls for two pianos, celesta, four percussionists, and a full complement of wind players.
They will be joined by the Solano and Vallejo choral societies, the Solano Community College Chamber Choir, the St. Vincent Elementary School Children’s Choir, and three soloists: soprano Aimee Puentes, who sang the piece with the Santa Cruz Symphony in 2003, baritone Austin Kness, and tenor Brian Staufenbiel, who did Carmina with Ramadanoff and the Oakland East Bay Symphony last May.
Orff’s visceral music builds on driving repetitive rhythms and simple motifs. Carmina, with its aspects of ritual and various repetitive devices, was strongly influenced by Igor Stravinsky, particularly works like his 1917 ballet Les Noces, the conductor notes. The German composer set the music to 24 poems from the Carmina Burana, a collection of love poems and vagabond songs apparently written in the 11th and 12th centuries by satiric student clerics known as Goliards, in Latin and German. The lyrics speak of sweet longing, the pleasures of the flesh and the grape, the joys of spring.
“The chorus has to be a character, in a lot of respects,” Ramadanoff says. “When the men are in the tavern, it’s the ultimate bachelor party, and they need to convey that bachelor party.” It’s no wonder that the blood-rushing “O Fortuna,” which opens and closes the oratorio, has cropped up in a slew of ads and movies, from The Doors to Excalibur.
“The piece grabs you,” the maestro says. “It’s well-written. It’s obvious in its appeal, but it’s a good piece.”
Rounding out Saturday’s performance will be James Beckel’s 1996 Musica Mobilus, a four-and-a-half-minute homage to sculptor Alexander Calder, master of the mobile. Written for brass choir, the contrapuntal piece was specifically inspired by Calder’s Five Pieces Suspended at the Indianapolis Museum. Beckel based his work on five pitches — A, F-sharp, G, C, and D — that continually shift in harmony and mood. This version uses four horns, three trombones, a tuba, and three percussionists playing suspended cymbal, glockenspiel, and wind chimes.