Ryman Healthcare Winter Gala: Carmina Burana

Queensland’s 2023 Australian of the Year – the extraordinary yidaki (didgeridoo) virtuoso William Barton – performs Peter Sculthorpe's evocative Earth Cry.

The steamy Spanish legend of Don Juan has seduced many an artist and composer since the renaissance. Rumour has it that the content of this orchestral tone poem – as disapproving letters to Strauss from his father would suggest – also draws on insight from the composer’s lived experience of scandalous behaviour.

Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe is known for his evocative musical exploration of remote Australian landscapes. Inspired by songlines of Ubirr in Kakadu National Park, this performance of Earth Cry features William Barton. Orff’s epic Carmina Burana flips the traditional idea of a cantata. Usually a religious work for instrumental ensemble, choir, and soloists, instead the work uses medieval secular (and sometimes scandalous) poetry as its basis to explore the age-old vices of life, love, and fortune.