Hartford Symphony Orchestra of Carl Orff’s "Carmina Burana". After hearing the piece for the first time, audiences jumped to their feet with standing ovations and the local papers overflowed with excellent reviews. On March 27, 1957 the Symphony recorded "Carmina Burana" on the Vanguard record label. Fritz Mahler continued the Hartford Symphony’s recording project with the Vanguard label, recording three new albums: Berlioz’s Requiem, Gustav Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied, and Bloch’s Three Jewish Poems for Orchestra and Copland’s Variations for Orchestra & Fanfare for the Common Man. The sixties opened with a general sense of uneasiness amongst the Hartford Symphony administration over the
Carmina Burana (Orff) 21st century: 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. "Carmina Burana" is structured into five major sections, containing 25 movements total. Orff indicates "attacca" markings between all the movements within each scene. Much of the compositional structure is based on the idea of the turning Fortuna Wheel. The drawing of the wheel found on the first page of the "Burana Codex" includes four phrases around the outside of the wheel: Within each scene, and sometimes within a single