Carmina Burana (and Sea Pictures) | Bury Bach Choir

This concert features two wonderful works not heard in Bury St Edmunds for a very long time: Elgar’s Sea Pictures, and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

In his wonderful song-cycle Sea Pictures, Elgar sets five poems. In each, the music evokes the sounds and endless movements of the sea, and the threat posed by its unpredictable moods. Valerie Reid will sing two of the songs, including the incomparable 'Where Corals Lie', and the choir will sing three.

This will be followed by Carmina Burana, composed by Carl Orff in 1935 and 1936, which he based on twenty-four poems dating from the 11th and 12th centuries. The wide range of topics in this amazing work seem as relevant today as they did all those years ago: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling, and lust. It opens and closes with the instantly recognisable song 'O Fortuna', surely one of the grandest and most seductive pieces of choral music ever written. The insistent energy of the choir’s singing, together with Orff’s shimmering piano and percussion accompaniment dominated often by powerful and variable rhythms, makes a performance of Carmina Burana a very exciting experience. Don’t miss it!