The Thousand-Year Composition: Carmina Burana Rule Over Britain

The most played (in the UK) classical piece of the last 75 years?

Nazi music.

(and no, it's not Wagner. And by the way, despite Orff's odious douchiness, Opera Chic is a big fan).

The top ten after the jump!

Orff - O Fortuna (Kurt Eichhorn)

Vaughan Williams - Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis (Bernard Haitink)

Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade (Charles Mackerras)

Tchaikovsky - The Sleeping Beauty (Mikhail Pletnev)

Schumann - Romance In F Sharp Major Op 28/2 (Joseph Cooper)

Delibes - Sylvia (Richard Bonynge)

Rachmaninov - Symphony No 2 (Vladimir Ashkenazy)

Holst - The Planets (James Loughran)

Tchaikovsky - The Sleeping Beauty (Valery Gergiev)

Schubert - Symphony No 5 (Neville Marriner)

Comments

[Q]

too bad the tally is by recording not by works, (The Sleeping Beauty appears twice) it is really misleading to claim that O Fortuna is the most listened to piece in the title.

The truly popular piece are probably recorded most often and they won't be on this list simply because the number of recording exists, these are just the popular ones that BBC for some reason have very few recordings for. The absence of any Mozart might be a telling sign.

[C.S.]

Politics have nothing to do with music.
So there is no "Nazi" music. It is totally ridiculous to mix people's political beliefs with the music they compose or play. Music notes do not belong to parties!

[C'est Moi]

O Fortuna being at the top sounds about right.
Everyone knows it no matter how clueless they are about (any) music, and they usually even know its name. It's been used in lame beer commericals in Canada too many times, also. Or maybe the fact that I can't stand it is why it seems that I hear it everywhere. The stuff I like I don't mind hearing too many times..

[Lily]

Strangely, I was able to live for decades without being exposed to the seamy nightmare that is Carmena Burana. When I watched it performed, I was aghast. Dreadful, dreadful music, and writhing that passes for dance but seems completely bogus. Doubtless, my reaction is that of a bourgeoise who has been thoroughly epater-ed, but I stick to my opinion. To think that Britain immerses itself in this music more often than Sleeping Beauty is sad.

[Lily]

Carmina, not Carmena. I've got that gypsy on my brain. Can't wait to see what the Met does with her this time.

[Lou Ann D.]

I love the Swedish recording with only piano, percussion from the mid-90s with Peter Mattei. I think it's lovely.

[Warren]

ditto what C.S. said. Also, I realize that yours was a humorous tongue-in-cheek aside, OC, so this comment is more for the ignorant Wagner-haters out there, but it's beyond me how any serious opera and music person could call Wagner "Nazi music". Have you actually listened to Tristan und Isolde or Parsifal? For the history-challenged and there seem to be many, Wagner died in 1883, he was a 19th century composer who is consistently put by musicologists and serious musicians up at the summit of Western music with a handful of other artistic giants.

But someone who did not know when he lived would not likely glean such a basic fact from the way some people talk about him.

(or maybe Dick actually died in the bunker with Hitler, along with Beethoven & Brahms, who really knows?, maybe they were all schtupping Eva Braun in the end...??)