L'enfant prodigue - Debusssy
Carmina Burana - Orff
The Galway Baroque Singers made a striking contribution to Debussy's cantata about the Prodigal Son. After mother and son have been reunited and the father has given his blessing, the choir joined in a hymn of praise to the Lord, singing with rich rounded tone and without music. This gave an unexpected immediacy to the rather artificial exchanges among the three solo singers. Of the three, it was Emmanuel Lawler who was the most successful at wedding the rhythms of spoken French to the melodic line. Damien Smith was suitably solemn as the father, but Cara O'Sullivan was a bit too frantic as the grieving mother, even when the composer asks for retenue or restraint. The band, under Proinnsias O Duinn, got closest to Debussy's individual style.
In the principal work of the evening, Orff's Carmina Burana, the soloists happily exaggerated the parodic elements of their contributions: Damien Smith distorted his line with the logic of drunkenness; Lawler was an effectively anguished roast swan and Cara O'Sullivan sang her praise of love with the ardour of a Puccini heroine.
The choir (director: Audrey Corbett) and the band were rhythmically alert and the orchestral colour was laid on lavishly, so, despite the strophic and repetitive nature of the word-settings, the performance never dragged but raced along from start to finish. By recreating the spirit of the vagabond scholar-poets of the 12th and 13th centuries in a simplified modern idiom, Orff wrote a work which has not lost its appeal in the 60 years since it was written; the audience responded enthusiastically to the lively performance.
