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 act with the goddess of love herself, Venus. The "Carmina Burana" contains numerous poetic descriptions of a raucous medieval paradise (CB 195–207, 211, 217, 219), for which the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, known for his advocation of the blissful life, is even taken as an authority on the subject (CB 211). CB 219 describes, for example, an "ordo vagorum" (vagrant order) to which people from every land and clerics of all rankings were invited—even "presbyter cum sua matrona," or "a priest with his lady wife" (humorous because Catholic priests must swear an oath of celibacy). CB 215 even provides an