Musica Viva NY and The Allen-Stevenson School Select Chorus perform Carl Orff’s most iconic work, Carmina Burana, kicking off our first choral concert of the 2022–23 season with energy and excitement. Finished in 1936, and based on 11th and 12th century poetry, Carmina Burana evokes timeless states of the human condition from happiness all the way to despair. Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer (1869) – love-song waltzes – similarly explore the gamut of emotions from passion and longing to joy and sadness. Set to folk song texts from various Eastern European countries, and coupled with the oom-pah-pah rhythm of the Austrian folk dance ländler, these pieces are romantic and light-hearted, but also complex and sophisticated.

• Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op.52, Johannes Brahms

• Carmina Burana, Carl Orff