RALEIGH—The North Carolina Symphony and WUNC 91.5FM have partnered to present great music for a summer evening all season long, and just two powerhouse Symphony performances from the past concert season remain in the series.
“Carmina Burana” will be available via online streaming only at wunc.org for one week beginning Monday, Aug. 27. “Mozart’s Requiem,” a concert that marked the tenth anniversary of 9/11, will air on WUNC 91.5FM on Monday, Sept. 3 from 10:00 p.m. to midnight. It will be available for streaming online at wunc.org during the following week.
In these programs, legendary broadcaster David Hartman hosts an exhilarating evening of music recorded live in Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall. WUNC listeners have special access to content not available to concertgoers, including interviews with musicians and soloists and insights into some of the finest compositions ever written. To stream the broadcast and see the latest details on upcoming Symphony programs on WUNC 91.5FM, visit wunc.org/programs/north-carolina-symphony-concert-series.
The “Carmina Burana” program features North Carolina Symphony Music Director Grant Llewellyn leading the North Carolina Master Chorale and renowned guest artists in two choral highlights.
Poulenc: Gloria
Orff: Carmina Burana
Composed by Carl Orff beginning in 1935, Carmina Burana is based on 24 poems found in the medieval collection of the same name. The often-quoted composition has taken a unique place in popular culture, a musical Canterbury Tales that covers a wide range of topics: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of spring and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust, to name a small few.
“It is incredibly evocative, incredibly powerful at some moments and poignant at others,” says Llewellyn of this tour-de-force. “There’s a reason it has endured and people love to hear it. It’s a piece I enthusiastically conduct.”
The concert, which also includes Francis Poulenc’s Gloria—“a joyous hymn to the glory of God,” in the composer’s words—was performed live in Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall as part of the Duke Medicine Classical Series Raleigh on Friday and Saturday, May 11-12, 2012.
The voices return in the Sept. 3 broadcast on WUNC 91.5FM, as Llewellyn leads the orchestra and several choirs in one of the biggest, most beloved compositions in all of classical music, Mozart’s Requiem.
Mozart: Ave verum corpus
J. Mark Scearce: This Thread
Mozart: Requiem
Perhaps as famous for the mysterious circumstances surrounding its composition as for the striking music itself, Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor was his final composition and the consuming passion of his last months. The result was and is an otherworldly composition that remains among the most provocative large-scale musical works. As Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus said of Mozart, “There is no feeling—human or cosmic, no depth, and no height the human spirit can reach—that is not contained in his music.”
Meanwhile, the program’s opener is Mozart’s sublime choral masterpiece Ave verum corpus. An alluring work of remarkable simplicity, Ave verum corpus captivates listeners “by its humanity,” wrote famous Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein, “by its appeal to all devout and childlike hearts, by its directness.”
The broadcast also features a local note in the magnificent This Thread by Raleigh composer and North Carolina State University Music Department Director J. Mark Scearce. The penetrating work in one movement was composed in 2003 as a response to Toni Morrison’s commemorative poem “The Dead of September 11.”
“I think it’s his finest work,” says Llewellyn.
The concert was performed live in Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall as part of the Duke Medicine Classical Series Raleigh and in remembrance of 9/11, Friday and Saturday, Sept. 8-9, 2011.
The Symphony’s 80th Anniversary Season continues next month with the orchestra’s concert series in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Fayetteville, New Bern, Southern Pines and Wilmington, as well as individual concerts across the state.
Subscriptions and tickets to these series are available now, online at or by calling the Symphony Box Office at (919) 733.2750 or toll free (877) 627.6724.