Carmina Burana and fate now wins

Composer Carl Orff based Carmina Burana on twenty poems – but far from love odes, these verses deal with lust, gambling, drinking and the changing hand of fate (“O Fortuna!”). Artistic partner Dashon Burton and the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus lend their voices to this raunchy cantata. It pairs well with Orff’s epic poem “Fate Now Conquers” by Carlos Simon, which refers to Beethoven’s notebook entry and explores the “unpredictable paths of fate.” Between them, the MSO presents its own principal trombonist Megumi Kanda in Tan Dun’s “Three Muses in Video Games,” a bold and soulful concerto that challenges the trombonist to evoke three age-old Chinese musical instruments.