{"id":5065,"date":"2019-04-07T14:07:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=5065"},"modified":"2019-06-23T17:22:38","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T16:22:38","slug":"hastings-philharmonic-carmina-burana-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=5065","title":{"rendered":"Hastings Philharmonic: Carmina Burana"},"content":{"rendered":"

St Mary in the Castle, Hastings, Saturday 6 April 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In many ways the hero and heroine of this concert were Francis Rayne and Stephanie Gurga on piano. Not only did they perform Brahms\u2019s sonata for two pianos in F minor op 34b \u2013 an unusual outing \u2013 with tender intelligence in the first half but they gave us energetic accompaniment to Carl Orff\u2019s best known work after the interval.<\/p>\n

This Carmina Burana<\/em> used the Willhelm Killmayer concert version (authorised by Orff) scored for two pianos and sic percussionists. It must be great fun do because the scoring is very imaginative and it\u2019s good to see percussion to the fore. The six players here, several of them very young, did a fine and precise job.<\/p>\n

And so to the choir. Carmina Burana<\/em> is a very challenging and long sing but the energy held up pretty well. Marcio da Silva \u2013 a conductor who mouths every word \u2013 has an unusual style carving visual shapes with his hands but he brings the best out in the singers most of the time with remarkably few wobbly moments considering the demands of the piece. What with all those unfamiliar words (we\u2019re obviously a long way from the comfort zone of the usual masses and magnificats here), cross rhythms and syncopation this is not, simple as it sounds in places, a work for the chorally faint hearted.<\/p>\n

High spots included the vibrant sound in the opening and closing choruses, the very rich confident alto work in the exposed section of Primo vere<\/em> and slow section of Swaz hie gat umbe<\/em> and the well handled shift into 3|4 time for Floret silva<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There was some lovely solo singing \u2013 full of colour and character \u2013 from Ricardo Panela although he struggles for those cruel falsetto notes and ducked out of one top G altogether. Ellen Williams, the soprano soloist, has an ethereally sweet voice which worked well here to connote innocence especially in Dulcissime.<\/em><\/p>\n

St Mary in the Castle, which I was visiting for the first time, has a terrific acoustic and it\u2019s a credit to Hastings Borough Council which originally facilitated the rebirth of this attractive Grade 2* listed building as an arts venue. Today, however, it has no council funding and certainly needs more care and investment. My plus 1 is disabled and I reckon that the venue\u2019s two person lift, which wasn\u2019t working at all at the beginning of the evening, is the slowest in Sussex. The loos aren\u2019t great either. Venues like this are too valuable to the community to be put at risk.<\/p>\n

Susan Elkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St Mary in the Castle, Hastings, Saturday 6 April 2019 In many ways the hero and heroine of this concert were Francis Rayne and Stephanie Gurga on piano. Not only did they perform Brahms\u2019s sonata for two pianos in F … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5065"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5277,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions\/5277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}