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
Carl Orff these earlier works were released (some even with Orff's approval). As an historical aside, "Carmina Burana" is probably the most famous piece of music composed and premiered in Nazi Germany. "Carmina Burana" was in fact so popular that Orff received a commission in Frankfurt to compose incidental music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which was supposed to replace the banned music by Mendelssohn. After several performances of this music, he claimed not to be satisfied with it, and reworked it into the final version that was first performed in 1964. Orff was reluctant to term any of his works simply