Album: Kristjan Järvi, Carl Orff: Carmina Burana (Sony Classical)

 

Andy Gill
Thursday 06 September 2012 17:31 BST
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Compared to Daniel Harding's recent leaner version, Kristjan Järvi's version of Orff's masterpiece dives headfirst into the same elemental wellspring from which Stravinsky drew his Rite Of Spring, indulging the extremes of its dynamic range with gusto.

Here, the familiar "O Fortuna", with its invocation of "monstrous, meaningless Fate upon your turning wheel", is more obviously a pagan equivalent of the "Hallelujah Chorus", and there's a lascivious delight in the way that the "On The Green" section switches back and forth between erotic languor and carnal energy. For Järvi, it seems to be a case of sex and drink and, in its relentless rhythms, rock'*'roll, an eternal dualist struggle between body and spirit: "Dead in my soul, I take care of my skin".

Download: O Fortuna; Omnia sol temperat; Estuans interius

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