7.45pm
"Love and Lust"
Festival Chorus
Choristers of Worcester Cathedral
Choristers of All Saints, Worcester, Massachusetts
Philharmonia Orchestra
Conducted by Adrian Lucas
Worcester Cathedral
But Tickets: £37/£32/£26/£18/£10

Ferguson - Overture for an Occasion
Bernstein - Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Orff - Carmina Burana

Maureen Brathwaite (Soprano)
Lawrence Zazzo (Tenor)
Christopher Purves (Baritone)

Sponsored by Cryoservice Ltd.

In 1957 Bernstein created the music for West Side Story. The stage show, and even more the film version which captured so many adolescent hearts when it first appeared in the 1960s, were both full of a raw energy that spilled over from the narrative into a sequence of dance episodes brilliantly integrated into the original concept, but which Bernstein nevertheless later felt able to give a separate concert-hall existence. This famous dance suite was crafted from the tunes of the show. Its conception is purely symphonic but even as the final chords sound, we still feel uncertainty and ominous foreboding. Ever the cultural critic, Bernstein's hope is tempered by his times. McCarthyism (which caused Bernstein to be blacklisted), the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, racism - all these converged to create an Age of Anxiety, the crucible from which this music was formed.

Carl Orff composed a number of works for the theatre and concert hall but he is chiefly remembered for his dramatic cantata, Carmina Burana, written in 1936 and his first major work. It perhaps comes as no surprise to learn that Orff was dismissed by the critics - one called him ‘a rich man's banjo player' - but the work immediately appealed to the public and has remained a great favourite ever since. One critic called it ‘degenerate', but it was received well by others, and became popular with the higher echelons of the German government. It is these plaudits that cast a shadow over the piece and its composer, as the party in power at the time was the National Socialist Party under Adolf Hitler. After the end of the Second World War, Orff said little about his acceptance and adulation by the Nazis; certainly he remained in Germany during the war, and he subsequently received support from the party. It is also obvious that the ethos of Carmina Burana is very much of its age and place - many of the classical references in the work echo the spirit of the Nazi-choreographed set-pieces at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which portrayed Aryan youth as the new Greek ideal. However, whether Orff was active in the party, whether he was secretly a member of The White Rose resistance movement (as he claimed), or whether he simply saw his work as being above politics, is unknown.