Carmina Burana, The Bach Choir

'O Fortuna' is one of the twentieth century’s most famous pieces of music, used to soundtrack myriad adverts, films and television shows and thus well-known even to those with little interest in classical or choral music. But it is only the first fragment of a larger whole, the Carmina Burana (1937). Loud, passionate and immediate, it is the magnum opus of Carl Orff, a composer otherwise known for his music education schemes and controversial interactions with the Third Reich.
The Bach Choir is set to perform this great cantata for voices and orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall this February, and it looks to be a powerful experience. The work, with its rhythmic prowess, extreme emotional shifts and ever memorable melodies, abounds with excitement. It’s formed of three sections, all setting to music secular texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the first celebrates the return of spring time; the second changes tone – warning of the excesses of vice; and the third sings the virtues of love – a celebratory and moving musical climax. This is as accessible as modern classical music gets. The resident Philharmonia Orchestra will handle the instrumental parts, under the baton of David Hill. 
Opening the night is a lesser known but extremely interesting work: Missa Brevis by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály. This one, written in the height of the Second World War, was the composer’s ‘hymn to hope’ - a delicate and disarmingly moving work for voices, which should act as a counterweight to the bombasity of the Orff.