Search - John Noble, Raymond Wolansky, Carl Orff :: Orff: Carmina Burana; Stravinsky: Fireworks; Circus Polka

Magnificent performance; remastering could be better

William E. Irving | Madison, WI United States | 12/16/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A. Chen's over-the-top, near-rant about the "incorrect" "over-pronunciation" of the Latin verse is itself, in my opinion, incorrect. The very LAST thing any chorus should do when performing this work is to "Italianize" the Latin, as Chen calls for.



Despite the fact that the modern nation of Italy and the ancient seat of the Roman Empire occupy the same real estate, the ethnic makeups of Italy in the Roman and modern periods are not the same, and since nearly two thousand years is a lot of water under the bridge, the languages are certainly not the same, either. The roots of modern Italian (BTW, there are several languages spoken in modern Italy, but for our purposes, I refer to Florentine Italian, the official national language) certainly do lie with Latin (as do Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, Provençal, Romansch, Occitan, Romanian and many others) but the two languages, despite sharing much root vocabulary, are phonologically quite different. In other words, the two languages just do not sound the same! If you were to take a time machine back to ancient Rome and speak Mr. Chen's ideal Italianized Latin, the Romans would likely look at you as if you had three heads, because they could not understand you!



Classical Latin's spoken patterns of syllabic stress are different from Italian. Latin consonants are hard. Most Italian consonants are soft. Italian vowels are mostly pure and open. Latin vowels were more varied, with much use of short and long, closed and open vowel sounds.



How do we know this? Through the examination of classical Greek and Latin poetry. The metrical verse structures in Classical Latin are very different from say, Italian poetry such as Dante's Inferno.



One might ask, how do we know how Classical Latin sounded without the availability of my aforementioned time machine? Well, the answer is, we can't for certain. But again, examination of poetry from various periods gives us many excellent clues.



And how do we know that the Latin in Carmina Burana is "Classical" Latin? One word is a good clue. In "In Taberna Quando Sumus", the verse "bibit albus, bibit niger", "The white man drinks, the black man drinks," contains the word, "albus," which in classical or more formal Latin means "white", or in this case, "white man." Over time, as Latin became "corrupted" by Germanic influences during and after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, "albus" was replaced in general usage by a word of Teutonic origin, "blancus", also meaning "white." "Blancus" is so-called "Vugar Latin" or spoken vernacular, while "Albus" is the earlier, archaic, formal "Classical" usage.



The songs in Carmina Burana as we see them here likely existed for some time before the monks of Benediktbeuern saw fit in the Thirteenth Century to compile them into what is now generally called the "Burana Codex." By this time, Latin was nearly gone as a spoken vernacular language. Literate people - which in those times consisted almost exclusively of clergy - used a formal Latin as a "lingua franca" of scholarly discourse; it was how Polish, Spanish, Italian, French and German churchmen communicated with one another. We know almost nothing of the poems' true origins, but the earlier, more formal, vocabulary suggests they may be quite old indeed.



Mr. Chen may not LIKE the sound of the Latin as pronounced in this recording, but it is, from a scholarly and historical viewpoint at least, more correct than a softened Italianate Latin like what one might have heard in a Roman Catholic church back in the days when Catholic masses were spoken in Latin.



As for the performance itself, I find it electrifying in its rhythmic energy. The choral balance and diction are first-rate, as is the orchestral playing, especially from the percussion. And the soloists are top-drawer: baritone Raymond Wolansky's effortless liquid-silver falsetto in "Dies, nox et omnia"; Counter-tenor Gerhard Unger's outstanding "Olim lacus colueram", were rendered with not only lovely vocal quality but intimate care for the meaning of the text; and Lucia Popp's spot-on pitch in the very difficult coloratura "Dulcissime." In all the recordings and live performances of this work I have heard, few soloists have come close, none have surpassed this trio of artists.



My only complaint is with the remastering, which still does not equal my old Angel Records LP vinyl. This remaster was done in 1987, apparently from a 2-track master tape used to cut the LP master. This was a common practice back then. The trouble with this is that the master tapes used for cutting wax masters were deliberately compressed, slightly boosted in the treble and rolled off in the bass. This was to compensate for the plasticity in the wax, which caused the groove to "rebound" after cutting, effectively cutting the treble. Also, too much bass could cause overcutting, where one groove is actually cut into the groove next to it, causing nasty distortion. These engineering trade-offs in the final 2-track master were necessary for LP mastering of that time, but when they are transferred directly to digital medium, the result is a bass-shy, hissy, glassy-sounding CD.



EMI should spend the money and go back to the original, first-generation multi-track master and completely remix it. Recordings from this era can sound fantastic on CD if proper care is taken. Here, it clearly was not - a pity, because this is an outstanding performance that is well worth the effort.



Buy it for the great performance, not for the audio."

Better remastering.

Daverz | 06/14/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great improvement over previous CD issues, which suffered from sibilant distortion."