Orff, Weill pieces to exhibit symphony's range

One of the Utah Symphony's goals is to make each concert better than the next one.

"We want to give a wide range of musical expression to the people of this community," music director Keith Lockhart said. "So, yes, we've met our goals so far, but then, you know, those goals are the same with each new concert and season."

One way the symphony furthers that goal of expanding musical expression is with Friday and Saturday's pairing of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and Kurt Weill's Second Symphony.

The Utah Symphony Chorus will perform with the Symphony during "Carmina Burana."

It wasn't hard for Lockhart to choose "Carmina." "It's a classical top 40 piece that always seems to draw a very enthusiastic audience," he said. "Its music is kind of like the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony — almost everybody knows the 'O Fortuna' opening of 'Carmina Burana."'

This is the second time Lockhart will have done the piece with the Utah Symphony, the first time being close to a decade ago. But what will make this performance different is its pairing with Weill's Second Symphony.

One of the most interesting features of "Carmina" is when you go back in the history of the work, Lockhart said. "Carl Orff was a composer, who through a combination of things — the nature of his music, the kind of bombastic German nationalistic nature of his music, and his willingness to stick around and make nice with the regime — he became a favorite composer of Germany during the late '30s and '40s. In other words, he was one of the composers that Hitler allowed performances of their works. And so 'Carmina Burana,' unfortunately, through no fault of its own, became associated with a very terrible thing."

Weill, on the other hand, was one of the Jewish composers who fled Germany in the 1930s. "These two pieces, written only a couple years apart, have a very interesting sociological switch to them," Lockhart said. "One of them is the piece of a person who basically escaped with his life and the clothes on his back and restarted a new life in this country. And the other one is a person who stuck around for the show, so to speak."