Life, Death and Shameless Excess

Sex, drink and roasted swans: the medieval monks who wrote the words to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana certainly knew how to enjoy themselves.

There’s nothing – repeat, nothing – sacred about Orff’s outrageous (and unmistakably secular) choral showstopper; just terrific melodies, unstoppable energy and some thoroughly bad behaviour.

It’s the climax of this showcase concert for the London Philharmonic Choir.

But the evening begins with the heartfelt Stabat Mater that the former bad boy of French music composed after the death of a close friend –and after discovering a spirituality, he said, that ‘smells of orange blossom or jasmine’.