Congrats to the L.A. Philharmonic for consoling us that, historically, our favorite pastimes of militarism and rape should not long remain unfashionable. Conductor and part-time comedian Bramwell Tovey pointed out that Beethoven's 1808 "Choral Fantasy" and Carl Orff's 1935 "Carmina Burana" were both created in the run-up to the kind of major wars to which we can look forward. And both compositions depict love in muscular terms we can understand.
"Fantasy" alternated meadowy frolic with triumphant thrusts appropriate to source poet Friedrich Schiller's verses praising Springtime's union of "Lieb und Kraft" (love and force). World-class pianist Emanuel Ax followed the sometimes surprising chord changes with wonderfully precise alacrity and the fluid coldness of a mountain freshet. For Beethoven as for Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield.
With Orff's segment, things got less sophisticated though not less interesting. Called by Tovey "popular with bikers" (as unmufflered Harleys roared down nearby Highland Avenue), the stabworthy opening and closing movements of "Carmina Burana" have been employed in films such as "Excalibur," "Natural Born Killers" and "Jackass." The composition's assaultive rhythms and totalitarian lack of harmony, as well as lyric content derived from medieval nature poetry, attracted 1930s audiences who longed for a simple, golden past when Germans had plenty to drink, unrestricted virgin abductability and no vicious war reparations. We liked it too. Although Tovey, author of the award-winning "Requiem for a Charred Skull," said Orff "picked the wrong side" when faced with the choice between unemployment and Nazi collaboration, such master-race associations were muted by the selection of Chinese soprano Ying Fang and African-American baritone Norman Garrett, both of whom displayed incredible ease in negotiating at least three octaves. With particular versatiliy and guts, Garrett portrayed, mostly in Latin, characters ranging from a love-besotted youth to the drunken rapist Abbot of Cockaigne, a figure to whom we can still relate. Some listeners may have found humor in tenor Nicholas Phan's sensitive plaint of a once-proud swan roasted on a spit; those Americans who stand for Greatness surely did not.
Full orchestra, full Los Angeles Master Chorale and, perhaps most fitting, the Los Angeles Children's Chorus -- it was big, nasty and glorious. "Fate strikes down the strong man," lamented an ancient poet tapped for "Carmina Burana"; "everyone weep with me!"