Carmina Burana LP.


I came across a good copy of Orff's Carmina Burana in a used record shop the other day and bought it. It looks like a 1960s vintage on the Parliament Records label(PLP S 161) Vaclav Smetacek conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Czech Singers Chorus. This is a super performance and outstanding recording. This thing will really "torture test" your cartridge tracking ability! It ranges from large scale full symphonic with chorus, to very small scale acoustic and vocals, to super dynamic opera-style vocals. Wow! And the naturalness of the voices and instruments is like you're almost right there! This is a good example of what happens when you just buy an unknown(to me) record and get lucky. This will be one of my "reference records" for natural sounding music. And it will be one of my "test" records for evaluating cartridge/ tonearm performance. I will tell you, this record will put your system to the acid test. I didn't experience any mistracking, although I confess that I was waiting for it to happen with the many difficult passages on this record. This also made me very happy with the performance of my new analog system. It passed with flying colors. If any of you out there like the Carmina Burana, and I'm sure some of you do, then try to seek out a copy of this album. It will be worth your time and money. If you know of other great recordings/performances of the Carmina Burana, please post them here for me and others to learn from.
twl
The Ozawa version (Boston) is good (especially the soprano), except for the floppy disk RCA LP. It is also available on CD in the "High Peformance" version. The Tilson-Thomas (Cleveland) is not bad. The Kegel is okay.

BTW Carmina Burana is definitely Orff's most well-known work, but has anyone listened to "Catulli Carmina" ? It's also very nice, but not so spectacular.
Thanks for the tip - none of the copies of various pressings and performances of this work that I've tried have done it for me in the way that an NPR "In Performance" live broadcast from the Kennedy Center here in DC circa last year did. (Was this Zinmann with the NSO? I can't remember, but maybe somebody else will - or was there!)
ai have it too, and you're correct. I have another on Hungaraton, I'll post it when I find it.